WHICH  COLLEGE 
FOR  THE  BOY? 

LEADING  TYPES  IN  AMERICAN  EDUCATION 
BY 

JOHN   CORBIN 

AUTHOR  OF   "  AN  AMERICAN   AT  OXFORD,"  ETC. 

WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


BOSTON   AND   NEW    YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 


1908 


COPYRIGHT    1908   BY  JOHN   CORBIN 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  April  rgo8 


TO 
GEORGE   HORACE   LORIMER 


227617 


CONTENTS 

I.  PRINCETON  :  A  COLLEGIATE  UNIVERSITY     .  1 

II.  HARVARD  :  A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY  .        .  37 

III.  MICHIGAN:  A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY  91 

IV.  CORNELL  :   A   TECHNICAL   UNIVERSITY    .            .  124 

V.  CHICAGO  :  A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT  155 

VI.  WISCONSIN  :  A  UTILITARIAN  UNIVERSITY       .  185 

VII.  THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING      .        .         .        .  211 

VIII.  THE   SMALL  COLLEGE   VERSUS   THE   UNIVERSITY  244 

IX.  THE  QUESTION  OF  EXPENSE                                    ,  273 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Medical  School,  Harvard  University  (page  44)  .  Frontispiece 

The  Library,  Princeton  University 8 

Blair  Hall,  Princeton  University 16 

The  Fitz  Randolph  Gateway,  Princeton  University        .        .  22 

North  College,  Princeton  University         ....  30 

"  The  Yard,"  Harvard  University 60 

The  Harvard  Union,  the  University  Club-House       .        .  62 
The  Agamemnon  of  ^Eschylus  being  acted  by  Harvard  Stu- 
dents in  the  New  Stadium     ......  80 

University  Hall,  University  of  Michigan  ....  94 

The  Library,  University  of  Michigan 110 

Cornell  University,  North  Part  of  Campus  from  Sage  Tower .  130 

Reading-Room,  Cornell  University  Library       ...  138 

Goldwin  Smith  Hall  of  Humanities,  Cornell  University         .  152 

The  Tower  Group,  University  of  Chicago         ...  168 

University  Hall,  University  of  Wisconsin     ....  188 

Library  of  the  State  Historical  Society,  University  of  Wis- 
consin ..........  192 

Gymnasium  and  JBoathouse,  University  of  Wisconsin         .  198 

Commencement-Day  Procession,  University  of  Wisconsin     .  206 

A  'Class  in  Agriculture 216 

"  The  Way  to  Knox,"  Knox  College,  Galesburg,  III.     .        .  246 


PREFACE 

WHEN  the  following  chapters  were  appear- 
ing in  the  "  Saturday  Evening  Post," 
critics,  of  whom  there  was  a  liberal  supply,  referred 
to  them  as  advising  parents  where  to  send  their 
sons.  That  is  an  undertaking  beyond  my  temer- 
ity, already  sufficiently  taxed  by  describing  eight 
or  ten  widely  different  institutions,  in  widely  dif- 
ferent regions,  and  appealing  to  widely  different 
people.  It  would  require  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  all  the  colleges  and  universities  in  the  country 
which,  of  all  the  modern  world,  is  most  liberally 
supplied  with  them,  at  least  in  the  matter  of 
numbers.  It  would  require,  moreover,  an  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  every  boy,  and  there  are  as 
yet  even  more  boys  in  the  country  than  colleges. 
The  end  in  view  was  humbler,  but,  I  believe, 
no  less  useful.  Nothing  is  more  important  to  a 
young  man  than  the  college  he  goes  to,  except 
it  be  the  parents  he  has  had — and  that  is  a 
matter  in  which  tyrannous  nature  has  given  him 

xi 


PREFACE 

no  alternative.  Yet  the  cases  are  very  few  in 
which  the  choice  is  made  with  enough  knowledge. 
A  boy  goes  to  his  father's  college,  to  the  college 
from  which  have  graduated  the  men  he  most 
respects,  to  that  which  is  nearest  home,  or  to 
which  some  friend  is  going. 

So  deep  is  the  ignorance  of  our  colleges  in 
general,  and  so  narrow  are  the  prevailing  preju- 
dices, that  most  men,  even  when  the  facts  are 
put  before  them,  instinctively  close  their  minds, 
as  they  would  shut  their  eyelids  against  an  un- 
expected ray  of  light.  Not  once,  but  often,  East- 
ern graduates  have  questioned  my  candor  and 
accuracy  because  I  have  spoken  highly  of  the 
state  universities  of  the  Middle  West.  Men  of 
this  stamp  are  obviously  very  unsafe  advisers. 
The  college  nearest  home,  other  things  being 
equal,  may  be  the  best.  But  other  things  so 
seldom  are  equal;  and  very  often,  especially  in 
the  case  of  wide-awake,  reliable,  ambitious  boys, 
nothing  is  more  valuable  than  the  opportunity 
of  meeting  fellows  of  a  different  kind  and  from 
different  parts  of  the  country. 

To  my  main  title,  which  was  a  present  from 
the  editor  of  the  "Saturday  Evening  Post,"  I  have 

xii 


PREFACE 

consequently  added  a  sub-title.  We  are  to  dis- 
cuss leading  types  in  American  education.  I 
have  tried  to  show  what  sort  of  young  men  go 
to  each  college,  what  its  traditions  are,  what 
the  authorities  aim  to  do,  and  what  they  are 
actually  doing.  I£  I  may  judge  from  my  own 
experience,  college  graduates,  even  when  they 
have  kept  in  touch  with  their  alma  mater,  will 
find  much  new  and  important  information. 
Others  will,  I  hope,  gain  a  pretty  clear  idea  of 
the  typical  aims  of  our  college  world,  and  which 
institution  affords  the  things  they  most  desire. 
In  brief,  the  purpose  has  been  to  enable  the 
reader  to  think  effectively  on  the  problem  in 
hand,  and  so  to  suit  the  college  to  the  boy,  the 
boy  to  the  college. 

Necessarily  I  have  omitted  many  more  insti- 
tutions than  I  have  described.  Of  the  state 
universities  I  have  had  space  for  only  two,  and 
several  universities  of  the  first  rank,  such  as 
Columbia  and  Leland  Stanford,  I  have  been 
obliged  to  pass  by.  Besides  these,  there  are 
many  institutions  of  great  age,  sound  traditions, 
and  progressive  character  which  would  well  re- 
ward consideration,  such  as  —  to  mention  only 

xiii 


PREFACE 

a  few — Dartmouth,  Brown,  Haverford,  Lafay- 
ette, and  Johns  Hopkins. 

Yale  was  omitted  for  other  reasons.  When 
the  editor  of  the  "  Post/'  Mr.  George  Horace 
Lorimer,  was  advising  with  me  as  to  the  selection, 
he  remarked  that  Yale  was,  after  all,  of  the 
same  general  type  as  Harvard,  and  might  be 
omitted  in  favor  of  some  institution  that  would 
give  the  series  greater  variety  and  a  more  repre- 
sentative character.  As  Mr.  Lorimer  is  himself 
a  Yale  man,  he  is  probably  not  unaware  that 
there  is  a  lively,  indeed  a  historical,  difference 
between  these  two  institutions.  I  even  suspect 
that  it  was  this  difference,  rather  than  the  simi- 
larity, which  led  him  to  propose  the  exclusion.  I 
fancy  him  bracing  himself  to  endure  in  his  col- 
umns a  hectic  eulogy  of  my  own  alma  mater  as 
preferable,  at  the  worst,  to  an  equally  hectic  de- 
nunciation of  his. 

Perhaps  I  have  been  filially  partial  to  Harvard, 
though  certain  ebullitions  at  Cambridge  when 
the  article  appeared,  to  which  I  shall  refer  in 
place,  have  given  me  reason  to  hope  not.  On 
the  other  hand  it  is  possible  that  devotion  to 
the  Harvard  motto  of  Veritas,  together  with  a 

xiv 


h  a 


PREFACE 

more  intimate  knowledge  of  the  facts  of  the 
case,  has  led  me  to  a  frankness  in  adverse  criti- 
cism which  would  have  been  difficult  and  in 
questionable  taste  in  the  case  of  any  other,  and 
especially  the  rival  institution.  What  if,  in  de- 
barring me  from  New  Haven,  Mr.  Lorimer  had 
deprived  his  alma  mater  of  a  fervent  eulogy,  a 
panegyric?  It  would  have  served  him  right, 
and  Yale  too. 

As  for  the  reader,  if  he  is  interested  in  Yale 
—  and  who  is  not  ?  —  he  may  gather,  I  hope,  in 
passages  scattered  through  the  following  pages, 
a  pretty  clear  idea  of  its  failure  to  produce  men 
of  advanced  ideas  or  of  originality  in  the  arts, 
and  of  its  success  in  producing  eager  and  sub- 
stantial men  in  business  and  in  the  professions; 
of  the  oligarchic,  perhaps  tyrannical,  powers  of 
the  senior  societies,  and  of  their  organized  effi- 
ciency in  such  undergraduate  activities  as  they 
set  their  hands  to.  Yale  is,  in  a  word,  the  typical 
American  university,  and  its  failures  and  suc- 
cesses are  those  of  the  nation  at  large. 

Throughout  I  have  given  special  attention  to 
certain  forward  tendencies  in  American  educa- 
tion, dealing  with  a  possible  future  as  well  as 

XV 


PREFACE 

with  the  actual  present.  Perhaps  I  shall  be 
charged  with  riding  a  hobby.  A  dozen  years 
ago  I  made  a  pretty  careful  study  of  the  educa- 
tional institutions  of  the  mother  country,  which 
resulted  in  two  volumes,  "Schoolboy  Life  in 
England  "  and  "An  American  at  Oxford. "  Two 
things  chiefly  impressed  me.  By  means  of  the 
"houses"  of  the  public  schools  and  the  colleges 
within  the  universities,  England  has  pretty  nearly 
solved  the  residential  and  social  problems  of 
student  life.  And  by  means  of  the  tutorial 
system  and  the  "honour  schools"  in  the  uni- 
versities, England,  while  giving  way  slowly — 
much  too  slowly,  I  fear  —  to  the  modern  scien- 
tific spirit  and  to  the  necessity  of  allowing  a 
measurably  free  election  of  courses,  has  yet  ef- 
fected, as  we  have  not,  a  very  considerable  har- 
mony and  consistency  in  the  general  body  of  a 
man's  education. 

Certain  suggestions  I  made  for  reforms  here 
along  similar  though  far  from  identical  lines 
fell,  as  I  thought,  on  barren  ground.  For  almost 
a  decade  the  cause  seemed  a  lost  cause.  It  was 
as  much  a  surprise  as  a  delight  to  find  that  in 
most  of  the  institutions  I  visited  the  ideas  have 

xvi 


PREFACE 

long  had  root,  and  are  now  approaching  fruition. 
On  this  subject  I  wrote  a  separate  article,  for 
the  "Atlantic  Monthly,"  entitled  "Harking  Back 
to  the  Humanities,"  material  from  which  I  have 
inserted  in  the  following  chapters  wherever  it 
would  best  serve  to  elucidate  them.  If  it  appears 
that  I  have  devoted  too  much  space  to  these 
matters,  I  can  only  plead  that  they  lie  at  the 
source  of  the  two  main  influences  of  university 
life,  the  social  influence  and  the  educational. 
The  time  is  at  hand  when  we  shall  require  our 
universities,  whatever  they  do  for  the  scientific 
specialist,  to  offer  every  man  according  to  his 
capacities  a  stimulating  social  life  and  a  well-or- 
dered humanistic  education,  consciously  adapted 
to  his  individual  needs. 

It  would  be  wrong  to  close  without  expressing 
my  deep  sense  of  gratitude  for  the  hospitable 
frankness  with  which  stranger  universities  en- 
tertained me,  and  for  the  unfailing  vivacity  and 
enthusiasm  with  which  I  have  been  refuted, 
admonished,  and  lampooned  at  Harvard. 

JOHN  CORBIN. 

NEW  YORK,  April,  1908. 


WHICH  COLLEGE  FOE 
THE  BOY? 

I.   PRINCETON: 
A  COLLEGIATE  UNIVERSITY 

PRINCETON  wrought  confusion  to  its  ad- 
mirers —  among  whom  I  beg  to  be  consid- 
ered one  of  the  most  ardent  —  when  it  changed 
its  ancient  title  of  college  for  that  of  university. 
There  are  in  America  two  types  of  institutions  of 
higher  education  which,  if  not  mutually  exclusive, 
have  hitherto  at  least  been  highly  antagonistic. 
These  used  to  be  called  the  small  and  the  large 
college.  Of  late  years  they  have  been  more  accu- 
rately distinguished  as  the  college  and  the  univer- 
sity. One  teaches  the  few  subjects  which  are 
of  general  and  fundamental  value,  the  other 
many  and  diverse  subjects  highly  specialized.  One 
places  chief  emphasis  on  the  training  of  mind 
and  character,  the  other  on  science. 

The  distinction  is  vital.    In  this  present  day 
in  America  much  stress  is  laid  upon  utilitarian 

1 


PRINCETON 

achievement.  Thoughtful  folk  everywhere  feel 
the  need  of  an  infusion  of  larger  and  deeper 
ideals.  No  nation  can  maintain  its  eminence 
without  a  generous  share  of  the  faculty  of 
doing  things ;  but  beneath  and  above  this  is  the 
larger  life  of  the  spirit,  which  is  more  important 
than  any  material  success ;  more  important,  even, 
than  any  intellectual  success:  for  what  shall  it 
profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose 
his  own  soul  ?  Only  the  inner  spirit  of  manhood 
can  raise  the  world  higher  and  still  higher.  Once 
Princeton  stood  as  the  foremost  of  our  collegiate 
institutions  —  Williams,  Amherst,  Dartmouth, 
and  a  dozen  others.  Now,  in  name,  though  by  no 
means  in  fact,  it  is  a  university,  and  one  of  the 
least  considerable. 

In  any  real  sense  of  the  word  it  is  not  a  univer- 
sity, and  it  is  not  likely  to  become  one.  Whatever 
the  term  may  have  denoted  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
it  was  then,  and  has  since  been,  characteristically 
applied  to  institutions  giving  thorough  instruc- 
tion in  many,  if  not  all,  of  the  arts  and  professions. 
Its  purpose  was  highly  practical.  The  Master  oJ 
Arts  was  no  less  a  professional  man  than  the  law- 
yer and  the  priest,  and  before  taking  his  de| 

2 


A  COLLEGIATE   UNIVERSITY 

was  obliged  to  g v  t  he  was  indeed  a  master 

by  teaching  actual  pupus.  Our  American  uni- 
versities are  inspired  by  a  thoroughly  mediaeval 
instinct,  however  paradoxical  the  statement  may 
seem,  in  fostering  the  new  technical  as  well  as 
the  old  liberal  professions.  Princeton  has  depart- 
ments of  civil  and  electrical  engineering,  and  a 
graduate  school ;  but  together  they  do  not  include 
more  than  two  hundred  students.  In  the  nature 
of  things,  neither  can  compete  with  similar  de- 
partments in  any  one  of  a  dozen  American  uni- 
versities. 

Other  "  university  "  features  are  lacking  quite. 
It  once  established  a  law  school  and  then  abolished 
it — after  achieving  a  grand  total  of  seven  grad- 
uates in  six  years.  Hospital  and  clinical  facilities 
being  out  of  the  question  in  a  little  inland  town, 
it  has  not,  and  never  can  have,  a  local  medical 
school.  There  is  a  Princeton  theological  seminary, 
but,  as  this  is  denominational,  it  is  only  affiliated, 
not  an  integral  part  of  the  institution,  and  is  not 
mentioned  in  the  university  catalogue.  It  has  no 
schools  of  music,  architecture,  agriculture,  veter- 
inary medicine,  or  dentistry. 

Princeton  clearly  recognizes  its  limitations,  and, 


PRINCETON 

in  spite  of  its  assumed  title,  is  consciously  resolved 
not  to  compete  on  their  own  ground  with  other 
American  institutions  calling  themselves  univer- 
sities. Judged  merely  by  its  assumption  of  a  more 
grandiloquent  title,  in  short,  it  is  in  the  position 
of  a  small  boy  who  endeavors  to  hoist  himself  by 
the  bootstraps. 

Its  character  is  determined  by  its  location, 
as  is  always  the  case  with  an  institute  of  learning, 
at  least  in  many  fundamentals.  In  order  to  main- 
tain any  distinctive  atmosphere  and  spirit,  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania  has  a  life-and-death 
struggle  to  resist  the  devouring  force  of  Phila- 
delphia, while  Columbia  fled  for  its  life  out  of 
the  heart  of  New  York  to  Morningside  Heights. 
Yale  claims  to  be  ideally  situated  in  that  it  lives 
on  equal  terms  with  the  city  of  New  Haven,  so 
that  it  takes  what  it  needs  from  the  world  with- 
out surrendering  its  individuality;  whereas  Har- 
vard is  dominated  by  Boston.  Princeton  lies  in  a 
town  which  never  would  have  existed  except  for 
it,  and  which  is  reached  by  a  tiny  spur  of  a  rail- 
way that  has  its  end  —  as  it  had  its  origin  —  in 
the  college. 

Down  in  the  valley,  beyond  its  gently  sloping 
4 


A  COLLEGIATE   UNIVERSITY 

hill,  one  sees  the  trailing  smoke  of  a  great  conti- 
nental highway,  but  no  sound  of  conflict  reaches 
its  Gothic  halls.  It  lives  secluded  among  green 
meadows  and  beneath  blue  skies.  Nature  has  pre- 
destined it  to  the  purity  and  the  aloofness  of  col- 
legiate life  —  a  life  that  in  one  sense  at  least  is 
monastic.  As  a  leader  in  the  Faculty  expressed  it, 
Princeton  takes  boys  out  of  the  world,  dominates 
them  for  four  years,  and  returns  them  to  the 
world  grown  men,  formed  as  well  as  nourished  by 
their  Alma  Mater. 

Its  engines  are  two,  —  an  intellectual  life  cen- 
tring in  cultural  study,  and  a  social  life  centring 
in  all  the  activities  natural  to  a  community  of 
young  men  living  in  retirement  from  the  world. 

In  deed  if  not  in  name,  Princeton  has  remained 
true  to  the  collegiate  ideal  of  education  which 
America  inherited  from  the  parent  universities  of 
England.  Until  1870  the  curriculum  was  fixed 
and  set,  —  as  much  of  classics  and  mathematics, 
science,  history,  and  philosophy  as  could  be  taught 
to  the  average  undergraduate  in  four  years.  All 
took  the  same  studies,  and  no  others  were  given. 
But  the  nineteenth  century  had  witnessed  a  vast 
increase  in  the  field  of  knowledge,  and  with  it 

5 


PRINCETON 

the  introduction  of  the  scientific  spirit,  which  re- 
gards all  learning  as  of  equal  value.  Meanwhile 
the  age  of  the  undergraduate  had  advanced  a 
good  two  years. 

Under  the  lead  of  Harvard,  which  brought 
the  elective  system  to  its  earliest  and  broadest 
development,  though  it  did  not  absolutely  in- 
vent it,  our  larger  colleges  gradually  threw  open 
all  subjects  to  all  men.  The  scientific  spirit  and 
the  so-called  university  spirit  grew  up  hand  in 
hand.  The  Shakespearean  drama  and  railroading, 
Renaissance  culture  and  abnormal  psychology, 
counted  equally  for  the  degree. 

Princeton,  like  other  institutions  of  really  col- 
legiate character,  has  consistently  regarded  the 
old  subjects  as  of  primary  and  preeminent  value, 
in  that  they  discipline  mind  and  character,  and 
enlarge  the  imagination.  The  first  two  years  are 
still  prescribed.  It  is  only  in  the  junior  and  senior 
years  —  years  of  graduate  study,  according  to  the 
old  standards  —  that  a  student  may  choose  his 
own  courses.  Even  here  election  is  subject  to  a 
wise  supervision.  Every  man's  courses  must  be 
grouped  so  that  each  is  part  of  a  harmonious 
and  inclusive  whole.  Having  decided  to  specialize 

6 


A  COLLEGIATE   UNIVERSITY 

in  classical  literature  or  modern  history,  one  can- 
not wander  into  bacteriology  or  the  principles  of 
English  versification.  For  the  underclassman  the 
ideal  is  a  general  and  fundamental  discipline ;  for 
the  upperclassman  it  is  wisely  specialized  individ- 
ualism. First  and  last  the  college  cultivates  not 
science,  but  the  man. 

As  the  elder  curriculum  in  all  our  colleges  was 
inspired  by  that  of  the  English  universities,  so  this 
development  of  specialization  by  groups  is  analo- 
gous to  the  modern  English  "  honor  schools." 
At  Oxford  one  must  choose  among  a  few  organ- 
ized groups  of  studies,  —  Literce  Jlumaniores, 
Modern  History,  Mathematics,  Science,  and  Eng- 
lish, —  and,  having  chosen,  the  course  of  study  is 
in  effect  prescribed,  for  the  end  of  it  is  an  exami- 
nation set  by  the  university.  The  field  is  narrow, 
though  it  is  tending  slowly  to  become  larger.  One 
might  exhaust  the  entire  instruction  in  a  dozen 
years.  In  the  leading  American  universities,  as 
for  example  Harvard,  the  body  of  instruction  is 
so  large  that  it  would  require  almost  two  hundred 
years  to  exhaust  it.  As  England  is  tending  to 
broaden  the  general  field,  so  America  is  tending 
toward  a  more  effective  grouping.  And  this  is 

7 


PRINCETON 

a  matter  in  which  Princeton  is  in  the  vanguard 
of  progress. 

Only  a  few  years  ago,  Princeton  introduced 
another  English  idea,  —  the  tutor,  or,  as  he  is 
called  in  respect  to  the  local  disrepute  of  that 
word,  the  preceptor.  'The  departure  is  unique  in 
American  education,  and  bids  fair  to  prove  epoch- 
making.  Our  universities,  inspired  by  the  German 
system  of  seminars,  reserve  individual  instruction 
for  highly  specialized  graduate  courses,  the  pro- 
cedure in  which  is  rigidly  scientific,  and  the  pur- 
pose of  which  is  special  research  in  some  minute 
field  of  knowledge ;  Princeton  teaches  each  pupil 
as  an  individual  from  the  outset. 

The  main  body  of  instruction,  as  at  other 
American  universities,  is  given  by  professors  in 
large  lecture  courses,  and  the  final  degree  is 
awarded  on  the  basis  of  examinations  in  a  fixed 
number  of  these  courses.  The  preceptor's  work 
does  not  count  directly  for  the  degree.  His  duty 
is  not  to  coach  his  pupils  for  examinations  in 
the  subject-matter  of  professorial  lectures,  but 
to  direct  their  collateral  reading,  and,  by  discuss- 
ing it  with  them,  to  help  them  digest  and  assimi- 
late it.  His  sole  care  is  to  make  their  education 

8 


A  COLLEGIATE  UNIVERSITY 

enter  into  their  moral  and  mental  systems,  and 
so  become  a  vital  agent  in  developing  their 
character. 

Each  preceptor  teaches  only  four,  or  at  most 
five,  pupils  at  a  time.  As  far  as  possible  these  are 
chosen  from  men  of  equal  ability.  Able  and  eager 
students,  instead  of  being  held  back  by  the  care- 
less and  the  plodding,  advance  steadily  and  rap- 
idly. Students  of  less  ability,  instead  of  being 
hurried  over  ground  imperfectly  scanned,  master 
each  subject  as  far  as  they  go  in  it,  and  in  the 
end  make  definite  and  substantial  progress.  One 
and  all  profit  by  close  and  continuous  compan- 
ionship, not  only  with  their  preceptors,  but  with 
fellow  students. 

The  preceptor  loves  to  explore  interesting  by- 
ways of  knowledge.  At  the  time  of  the  eruption 
of  Mont  Pelee,  one  had  his  pupils  read  Pliny's 
description  of  the  eruption  of  Vesuvius ;  and  at 
the  time  of  the  burning  of  San  Francisco  he 
turned  with  them  to  Tacitus's  description  of  the 
burning  of  Kome  under  Nero. 

The  preceptorial  system  has  been  much  ridi- 
culed, and*  especially  by  Princeton  alumni,  who 
too  readily  confuse  it  with  such  tutoring  as  they 

9 


PRINCETON 

themselves  may  have  found  necessary  to  weather 
the  terrors  of  examination  time.  A  very  little 
reflection  should  clear  their  minds  and  restore 
their  loyalty.  Far  from  suggesting  the  intellectual 
nursery,  the  preceptorial  system  is  in  line  with 
the  most  advanced  educational  practice.  It  does 
for  the  liberal  arts,  and  in  precisely  the  same  way, 
what  the  much-vaunted  laboratory  method  does 
for  science. 

The  system  has,  perhaps,  a  questionable  fea- 
ture. In  England  one  body  of  men,  the  tutors, 
give  instruction,  and  another,  the  university 
examiners,  award  the  degrees ;  throughout,  the 
undergraduate  is  characteristically  under  a  single 
tutor,  who  supervises  his  progress  with  intimate 
personal  care.  At  Princeton,  as  at  all  American 
colleges  and  universities,  the  instructor  in  each 
course  examines  his  own  students ;  and  it  has  been 
found  expedient  to  give  the  student,  not  a  single 
tutor,  but  a  preceptor  for  every  subject.  In  the 
two  lower  years  he  has  thus  many  preceptors.  In 
the  two  higher  years,  however,  in  which  the 
studies  are  grouped,  he  has  a  single  preceptor, 
who  comes  into  a  close  and  helpful  relation  to 
him,  socially  and  intellectually. 

10 


A  COLLEGIATE   UNIVERSITY 

The  system  would  work  much  better,  the 
authorities  admit,  if  each  pupil  were  in  charge  of 
a  single  preceptor  through  his  first  two,  as  well 
as  his  two  later  years.  But,  wonderful  to  relate, 
"  university  "  education  in  America  has  been  so 
specialized  and  scattered  in  recent  decades  that 
it  is  impossible  to  secure  men  of  sufficiently  gen- 
eral training  to  teach  a  sophomore,  or  even  a 
freshman,  in  all  his  subjects. 

The  present  examination  system,  also,  is  capable 
of  improvement.  It  is  not  unlikely  that,  eventu- 
ally, as  the  advantage  of  preceptorial  instruction 
becomes  manifest,  the  functions  of  teaching  and 
granting  degrees  will  be  separated,  as  in  England, 
so  that  the  final  result  will  depend,  not  on  a  multi- 
plication of  tests  in  detached  courses  throughout 
the  four  years,  but  on  one  all-inclusive  examina- 
tion. A  possible  loss  in  disinterestedness  of  pre- 
ceptorial teaching,  it  is  felt,  would  be  more  than 
counterbalanced  by  the  gain  in  intellectual  scope 
and  grasp.  The  superiority  of  English  scholars 
in  writing  books  and  review  articles  is  in  no  small 
measure  attributable  to  the  honor  examinations 
of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  which  require  a  man 
to  have  not  only  knowledge,  but  also  the  power 

11 


PRINCETON 

to  assemble  it  in  coherent  and  convincing  form. 
Expression  goes  hand  in  hand  with  knowledge. 

Even  in  its  present  development,  the  Princeton 
system  of  grouped  courses  of  study  and  precep- 
tors is  far  and  away  ahead  of  any  instruction  in 
America  inspired  by  a  similar  ideal.  It  is  said  to 
have  worked  a  revolution  in  the  temperament  of 
the  undergraduate  that  is  all  but  incredible.  Once 
to  read,  and  most  of  all  to  talk  of  books,  was  to 
class  one's  self  with  that  disreputable  outcast, 
the  "poler."  To-day  the  library  reports  a  fair 
increase  in  the  number  of  books  taken  out ;  the 
campus  by  night  shows  many  windows  glowing 
with  the  lamp  of  study,  and  even  at  the  under- 
graduate eating-tables  book  talk  mingles  with 
gossip  of  clubs  and  athletics. 

In  the  graduate  school  for  the  first  time  one 
encounters  the  scientific  or  so-called  university 
methods  which  have  figured  so  largely  for  good 
and  for  evil  in  American  education.  Philology 
here  takes  equal  footing  with  literature,  and  minute 
research  with  instruction.  Teachers  and  taught 
gather  in  seminars,  and  theses  are  required  for 
the  degrees  of  M.  A.  and  Ph.  D.  The  more  sub- 
stantial part  of  Princeton's  claim  to  be  a  uni- 

12 


A  COLLEGIATE  UNIVERSITY 

versity  is  based  on  the  graduate  school.  But  the 
department  is  small,  both  in  students  and  in  the 
scope  of  its  instruction  —  a  mere  incident  in 
the  life  of  the  institution  as  a  whole.  Efforts  have 
been  made  to  enlarge  it.  For  some  years  a  con- 
siderable body  of  courses  was  offered.  But  many 
of  them  found  no  pupils,  and  were  very  wisely 
and  honestly  dropped  from  the  catalogue. 

In  its  present  normal  development  the  gradu- 
ate school  is  a  graceful  crown  to  the  instruction 
of  a  college,  but  a  very  inadequate  foundation  for 
the  larger  title.  The  most  interesting  fact  with 
regard  to  it  is  that  even  here  science  has  not 
quite  exorcised  the  humanities.  The  members  live 
together  in  a  community  not  dissimilar  to  an  Eng- 
lish college,  in  which  every  man,  from  the  mo- 
ment of  his  arrival,  boards  and  lodges,  works  and 
plays,  as  a  member  of  a  large  family  or  club.  To 
guard  against  the  narrowing  influence  of  gradu- 
ate study,  the  school  holds  a  weekly  beer  night, 
at  which  each  man  in  turn  opens  the  discussion 
by  reading  a  paper  on  his  special  subject.  The 
student  of  mathematics  is  thus  brought  in  con- 
tact with  the  latest  ideas  in  history,  the  student 
in  economics  with  the  latest  ideas  in  literature. 

13 


PRINCETON 

Many  graduate  schools  offer  a  larger  field  of 
study  and  a  more  brilliant  corps  of  professors; 
but  at  none  is  the  life  as  pleasant  and  the  atmos- 
phere of  cultivation  as  pervasive. 

The  ideal  of  undergraduate  life  at  Princeton  is 
organized  democracy.  Unorganized  democracy  is 
a  spontaneous  product,  characteristic  of  commun- 
ities too  new  for  local  spirit  and  concentrated 
traditions.  It  is  to  be  found  in  many  Western 
universities,  in  which  the  non-fraternity  men  rule 
—  by  force  of  numbers  rather  than  by  being 
representative  of  the  best  elements  in  the  life. 
Organized  democracy,  I  take  it,  is  the  rarest,  as 
it  is  the  most  precious,  flower  of  civilization.  It 
means  that  each  has  an  equal  chance  for  all  desir- 
able distinctions,  and  that  prominence  and  power 
come  to  those  who  have  deserved  it.  Social  life 
at  Princeton  is  one  vast  democratic  organization. 

Simplicity  of  dress  and  manner  amounts  to  an 
affectation.  Corduroy  trousers  have  their  votaries. 
Sweaters  are  in  vogue — sometimes,  it  is  said,  even 
at  dinner.  Lately  a  student  whose  sweater  showed 
traces  of  too  constant  wear  and  whose  trousers 
were  innocent  of  the  art  of  the  tailor  fell  ill,  and 
his  preceptor,  fearing  that  he  might  languish  in 

14 


A  COLLEGIATE  UNIVERSITY 

neglect  or  be  obliged  by  the  lack  of  money  to 
forego  his  education,  appealed  to  sympathetic  un- 
dergraduates of  known  solvency.  They  showed 
surprise,  until  told  of  the  reason  for  the  good 
preceptor's  fears. 

"  I  guess  there 's  no  danger,"  one  of  them  said. 
"  If  his  father's  trust  goes  bust,  he  can  probably 
sell  that  big  French  motor  car  of  his  for  enough 
to  get  well  on  and  carry  him  the  rest  of  the  way 
through  college." 

That  son  of  predatory  wealth  had  become  a 
Princetonian  not  wisely,  but  too  well.  Conversely, 
a  boy  of  humble  parentage  may  go  to  Prince- 
ton, and  by  mere  virtue  of  character  and  ability 
do  everything  and  be  everything. 

Princeton  abounds  in  traditional  customs  which, 
whatever  their  origin,  are  cherished  as  a  means 
of  imbuing  every  undergraduate  with  a  sense  of 
his  own  insignificance  and  of  the  paramount  duty 
of  college  loyalty.  Rushes  and  cane  sprees,  though 
on  the  decline,  are  regarded  as  a  means  of  foster- 
ing class  spirit  —  not  in  the  vulgar,  worldly  sense 
of  social  distinction,  mind  you,  but  in  the  esoteric, 
collegiate  sense  of  the  absorption  of  each  indi- 
vidual in  the  class  with  which  he  enters  and,  it 

15 


PRINCETON 

is  hoped,  will  graduate.  For  class  spirit  is  the 
nursery  of  college  spirit. 

Freshmen  are  "  horsed  "  —  not  because  the 
sophomores  take  any  unholy  delight  in  horsing 
them,  but  in  order  to  instill  in  their  youthful 
minds  a  due  sense  of  their  inferiority.  They  may 
not  turn  up  their  trousers,  wear  colored  socks  or 
tan  shoes.  They  may  not  smoke  a  pipe  in  public. 
They  may  not  walk  on  the  campus  grass,  or  in 
front  of  the  baseball  grandstand.  No  matter  how 
many  of  them  are  gathered  together,  if  a  sopho- 
more approaches  they  must  give  way  and  let  him 
pass,  though  all  step  into  the  mud  to  do  homage 
to  one. 

Such  customs  go  throughout  the  college  course. 
If  the  sophomore,  in  turn,  encounters  a  junior, 
he  steps  in  the  mud  in  turn.  The  customs  with 
regard  to  hats  and  caps  baffle  reportorial  curi- 
osity. A  mystic  time  comes  in  the  life  of  every 
undergraduate  when  he  may  wear  a  Mackinaw 
blanket  coat  or  a  yellow  slicker  on  the  campus, 
and  he  is  apt  to  wear  it  whether  it  is  hot  or  cold, 
wet  or  dry.  When  the  precise  day  and  hour  arrive 
for  assuming  a  new  dignity ^jt  is  often  marked  by 
a  peculiar  and  appropriate  ceremony.  Thus,  when 

16 


A   COLLEGIATE   UNIVERSITY 

a  freshman  has  finished  his  last  examination  in 
the  spring,  he  emerges  to  smoke  his  first  sopho- 
morical  pipe  on  the  campus,  and  the  sophomores 
— now  juniors  —  assemble  to  dust  the  steps  iron- 
ically with  their  caps  as  he  descends. 

Are  such  customs  vexatious  ?  Not  a  bit  of  it ! 
If  a  freshman  knows  what  is  good  for  him,  he 
takes  his  horsing  with  just  the  right  combination 
of  dignity  and  good  humor,  and,  having  found 
out  what  was  good  for  him,  he  visits  it  on  his 
successor.  As  for  the  less  violent  customs,  he 
regards  them  with  delight  verging  upon  dotage ; 
for  are  they  not  the  essence  of  Princeton  spirit, 
ever-present  reminders  that  he  is  a  Princetonian? 

There  may  be  superior  people  to  whom  all  this 
seems  a  childish  waste  of  time  and  energy.  It 
must  be  admitted  that  it  ill  accords  with  the 
dignified  intellectual  life  supposed — .with  what 
justification  I  shall  not  say  —  to  belong  to  a 
university. 

In  times  past,  at  least,  Princetonian  tradition 
prescribed  a  mental  as  well  as  a  sartorial  negligee. 
A  fellow  would  as  soon  cultivate  dude  clothes  as 
individual  opinions.  Once  a  Harvard  man  was 
asked  the  harmless  necessary  question  of  what  he 

17 


PRINCETON 

intended  to  do  when  he  graduated.  He  said  that 
he  would  like  to  be  a  dramatic  critic.  A  Prince- 
tonian  present  was  amazed  beyond  belief.  Down 
in  New  Jersey,  he  explained,  any  one  who  con- 
fessed to  such  an  unusual  and  highbrow  aspira- 
tion would  never  hear  the  end  of  it.  This  is  a 
matter  in  which  Yale  and  Princeton  are  at  one. 
There  was  once  an  undergraduate  at  New  Haven 
whose  soul  was  wrapped  up  in  music.  All  went 
well  with  him  until  it  was  discovered  that  as 
an  athlete  he  had  a  natural  ability  amounting  to 
genius.  He  was  haled  from  his  piano  to  the  run- 
ning track  and  the  football  field.  He  was  willing, 
as  I  gathered,  to  go  in  for  sports  with  moderation ; 
but  the  college  sought  to  impose  on  him  its  own 
standard  of  devotion.  He  left  Yale  to  continue 
his  musical  education  in  Germany. 

It  is  the  effect  of  organized  democracy  that  it 
sets  sharp,  and  often  quite  arbitrary,  limits  upon 
individual  taste  and  action.  At  Princeton  the 
limits  are  even  narrower  than  at  Yale,  for  the 
college  is  smaller  and  more  united.  May  it  be 
suggested  that  the  ruling  spirit  of  both  is  apt 
to  be  boyish  to  the  point  of  unintelligence  ? 
A  Yale  man  once  called  Harvard  a  breeder  of 

18 


A  COLLEGIATE  UNIVERSITY 

freaks.  The  retort  courteous  is  that  Yale,  and  even 
more  Princeton,  is  a  breeder  of  philistines.  It  is 
possible  that  at  Princeton  the  preceptorial  system 
has  put  independence  and  intelligence  more  in 
vogue,  but  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  the  tiger 
has  quite  changed  his  stripes. 

Certainly  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  assume  that 
stripes  are  altogether  bad  for  a  tiger.  Any  uni- 
versity that  values  a  vigorous  and  effective  spirit 
may  well  envy  Princeton.  To  take  the  most  obvi- 
ous test,  in  two  of  the  three  sports  it  has  cul- 
tivated—  football  and  baseball  —  it  has  main- 
tained the  highest  level  of  success.  Considering 
that  the  entire  student  body  numbers  only  some 
fourteen  hundred,  as  against  three  to  five  thou- 
sand in  the  rival  institutions,  this  is  an  achieve- 
ment of  might. 

One  autumn  lately  its  eleven  was  light  and 
fast ;  its  only  chance  of  success  lay  in  having  a 
hard,  even  field  to  run  and  dodge  on.  The  weather 
was  cold  and  wet,  and  before  the  game  with  Yale 
the  turf  was  covered  with  straw.  Then  came  a 
storm  of  snow  and  sleet,  inches  upon  inches  of  it. 
The  entire  university  turned  out  and  labored  till 
long  past  midnight,  carrying  off  the  snow,  taking 

19 


PRINCETON 

up  the  wet  straw,  sopping  the  ground  dry,  and 
putting  on  a  firm  new  thatch  against  the  weather. 
The  freshman  who  told  me  of  this  added  with 
bated  breath  that,  in  devotion  to  the  university, 
sophomores  allowed  themselves  to  be  crowded 
aside  by  freshmen  who  could  work  harder  and 
faster. 

There  is  another  side  to  this  Princeton  loyalty. 
The  track  team  has  not  been  successful,  and 
receives  little  encouragement  —  for  that  very  in- 
adequate reason.  Several  years  ago  some  zealous 
alumnus  brought  Mr.  Carnegie  to  the  town,  and 
it  was  only  natural  to  hope  that  he  would  see  how 
worthy  the  institution  was  of  assistance.  Unfortu- 
nately, to  make  conversation,  the  alumnus  pointed 
out  that  there  was  a  hollow  at  the  foot  of  the 
hill  which  might  easily  be  converted  into  a  lake. 
Carnegie  Lake  is  now  a  fact,  but  the  college  that 
dominates  it  is  as  poor  as  ever.  And  it  is  very 
much  sadder,  for  it  is  afraid  that  circumstances 
over  which  it  had  no  control  will  end  by  forcing 
it  to  take  up  with  another  losing  sport.  The 
world  is  very  human,  even  in  its  virtues. 

One  of  the  finest  flowers  of  the  Princeton  spirit 
is  the  so-called  "honor  system,"  which  it  invented 

20 


A  COLLEGIATE   UNIVERSITY 

to  do  away  with  the  double  disgrace  of  cheating 
in  examinations  and  of  being  watched  to  pre- 
vent it.  The  student  body  put  itself  on  parole. 
For  over  a  decade  now  the  professors  have  gone 
to  the  examination-room  with  their  papers,  and, 
having  given  their  few  words  of  counsel,  have 
left,  to  return  only  at  the  end  of  the  allotted  time. 
The  students  sit  as  they  choose,  smoke,  walk 
about,  talk.  And  the  evil  of  cheating  has  departed. 
The  expulsions  are  supposed  to  number  about 
one  a  year,  but  no  precise  statement  can  be  made, 
for  the  criminal  is  mercifully  spared  the  public 
announcement  of  his  crime. 

When  an  undergraduate  sees  another  attempt- 
ing to  copy  an  answer  he  calls  the  attention  of 
his  neighbors,  and,  if  the  case  is  a  clear  one,  they 
jointly  report  it.  The  culprit  is  heard  by  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Faculty,  and,  if  found  guilty,  is  given 
the  fatal  word.  Only  those  who  have  taken  part 
in  his  conviction  know  why  he  leaves  college. 
At  many  universities,  as  for  example  Harvard, 
cheating  is  rare.  It  has  been  justly  observed 
that  it  is  found  at  its  worst  under  the  system  of 
prescribed  studies,  and  in  the  boyish  atmosphere 
of  a  college.  But  this  only  renders  it  the  greater 

21 


PRINCETON 

glory  that  Princeton  undergraduates  have  abol- 
ished it  by  the  sheer  force  of  traditions  of  honor 
and  loyalty  to  the  good  name  of  their  alma  ma- 
ter. Other  institutions  have  attempted  to  adopt 
the  system,  but  not  all  of  them  with  the  same 
success.  Princeton  has  been  helped,  it  is  said, 
by  the  large  number  of  Southerners,  who  still 
hold  chivalrously  to  the  honor  of  a  gentleman's 
word. 

The  crowning  glory  of  this  organized  demo- 
cracy is  the  system  of  upperclass  eating-clubs  — 
Ivy,  Cottage,  Tiger  Inn,  and  the  rest.  Frater- 
nities are  not  permitted.  In  Western  universities 
they  will  tell  you  that  the  distinction  is  without 
difference,  —  that  the  Princeton  clubs  are  frater- 
nities in  everything  except  having  Greek-letter 
names,  secret  charters,  grips,  and  conclaves.  It  is 
true  that  the  element  of  mystery  is  unimportant. 
Yet  there  are  differences  that  are  vital.  The 
Princeton  clubs  have  avoided  the  worst,  and  to 
my  mind  the  only,  evil  feature  of  the  frater- 
nity system.  The  fact  that  a  man  enters  a  fra- 
ternity shortly  after  his  arrival  and  continues  in 
it  throughout  his  course  leaves  him  little  to  gain 
by  sacrificing  his  personal  convenience  for  the 

22 


A  COLLEGIATE   UNIVE] 

good  of  the  college.  Non-fraternity  : 
other  hand,  have  as  little  to  gain.  This  is  fatal 
to  the  highest  development  of  college  spirit.  In- 
stead of  solidifying  and  concentrating  the  student 
body,  the  fraternities  disintegrate  and  scatter 
it.  The  parts  become  more  important  than  the 
•whole. 

At  Princeton,  the  clubs,  instead  of  joining  in  a 
mad  rush  after  supposedly  desirable  sub-freshmen 
and  freshmen,  do  not  elect  members  until  the  end 
of  sophomore  and  the  beginning  of  junior  year. 
They  are  thus  far  more  nearly,  if  not  absolutely, 
representative,  —  the  reward  of  prominence  in 
recognized  undergraduate  activities,  and  the  sure 
means  of  concentrating  and  rendering  efficient 
the  best  elements  in  the  college.  The  fact  that 
they  are  only  eating-clubs,  moreover,  and  have  no 
rooms  for  undergraduates,  prevents  them  from 
lifting  their  members  quite  out  of  the  general 
life. 

More  than  this,  they  have  imposed  upon  them- 
selves a  restriction  no  less  wonderful  and  admir- 
able than  the  honor  system  in  examinations.  By 
virtue  of  "  the  upperclass  club  treaty,"  they 
abstain  from  all  effort  to  rush,  or  in  any  way 

23 


PRINCETON 

only  freshmen,  but  sophomores.  It  is 
club  once  proved  traitor  to  the  best 
interests  oi  the  college  by  renouncing  the  treaty 
and  pledging  its  recruits.  It  is  also  true  that  men 
living  in  the  close  intimacy  of  a  concentrated  col- 
lege life  cannot  escape  what  is  called  a  "  hunch/' 
as  to  who  is  destined  for  this  organization  or  that. 
But  the  backsliding  club  speedily  renounced  the 
error  of  its  way,  and  there  is  an  unwritten,  but 
generally  effective,  rule  that  for  weeks  before  the 
club  elections  all  intimacy  between  the  upper- 
classmen  and  underclassmen  be  suspended.  The 
system  of  elections,  which  is  quite  elaborate,  is 
designed  to  turn  over  the  voting  power  at  once 
to  the  incoming  members,  so  that  for  the  most 
part  a  man  is  elected  by  his  classmates.  No  Amer- 
ican college  or  university,  so  far  as  I  know,  has 
a  better  club  system,  or,  in  fact,  one  that  is  any- 
where near  as  good. 

The  only  comparable  system  is  that  at  Yale. 
There  the  senior  secret  societies,  Skull  and  Bones, 
Scroll  and  Keys,  Wolf's  Head  and  Elihu,  espe- 
cially the  two  former,  have  a  position  and  exert 
an  influence  unparalleled  in  American  college  life. 
To  them,  more  than  to  all  other  factors  combined, 

24 


A  COLLEGIATE  UNIVERSITY 

Yale  owes  her  athletic  success.  On  the  one  hand 
they  are  strictly  and  admirably  representative, 
election  being  based  on  success  in  the  leading 
undergraduate  activities ;  on  the  other,  by  virtue 
of  this  representative  character,  they  exert  a  mar- 
velously  beneficial,  though  oligarchic,  influence  on 
the  student  body  as  a  whole.  Election  to  them 
is  the  result  of  a  three  years'  system  of  training 
and  elimination  mainly  carried  on  in  a  set  of 
sophomore  and  junior  fraternities.  From  the 
start  of  his  freshman  year  it  is  a  man's  ambition 
to  put  himself  in  the  line  of  promotion  toward 
Bones  and  Keys.  If  he  fails  of  a  sophomore  club, 
he  is,  as  a  rule,  socially  lost.  If  he  "  makes  "  one, 
he  is  still  lost  unless,  by  conforming  successfully 
to  the  prevailing  code,  he  stands  the  process  of 
elimination.  The  life  of  the  outsider  is  as  unfor- 
tunate as  the  life  of  those  who  have  been 
"  tapped  "  is  fortunate.  As  at  all  American  uni- 
versities, the  great  mass  of  undergraduates  live 
scattered,  sometimes  neglected,  lives.  The  sense 
of  social  failure  is  so  deep  at  Yale  that  many  grad- 
uates yearly  leave  New  Haven  never  to  return. 

Princeton  is  resolutely  and  intelligently  bent 
on  avoiding  such  extremes  of  social  climbing. 

25 


PRINCETON 

The  purpose  in  forbidding  underclass  clubs  is 
to  make  the  life  of  freshmen  and  sophomores  an 
unorganized,  democratic  fellowship.  This  is  no 
easy  matter,  especially  as  the  size  of  the  classes 
is  increasing.  Of  late  a  system  has  grown  up 
that  reproduces  many  of  the  evil  features  of  the 
sophomore  and  junior  societies  at  Yale. 

Two  attempts  to  establish  general  student  com- 
mons having  failed,  the  undergraduates,  until 
lately,  took  their  meals  in  boarding-house  clubs. 
The  leading  sophomore  clubs  are  distinguished 
by  the  colors  of  peculiar  hats  they  wear.  Certain 
of  these,  notably  Red  Hat  and  Dark-Blue  Hat, 
by  carefully  selecting  prominent  men,  earned 
the  reputation  of  putting  their  members  in  line 
for  election  to  Ivy,  Tiger  Inn,  and  Cottage.  It 
thus  became  the  chief  end  of  the  freshman  clubs 
to  secure  what  is  called  the  "following"  of  Red 
Hat  and  Dark  Blue  —  that  is,  the  privilege  of 
wearing  the  hats  in  their  sophomore  year.  To 
do  so  was  to  be  socially  blest:  not  to  do  so  was 
to  become  an  outsider.  In  other  words,  under- 
class life  resolved  itself,  from  the  opening  of  the 
freshman  year,  into  persistent  and  elaborate  social 
clamber. 

26 


A  COLLEGIATE   UNIVERSITY 

An  astute  boarding-house  keeper  took  advan- 
tage of  the  fact.  He  managed  to  corral  Red  Hat 
and  Dark  Blue,  thus  making  his  group  of  board- 
ing-houses the  focus  of  underclass  life.  It  was 

o 

as  much  as  a  freshman's  chance  of  an  upperclass 
eating-club  was  worth  not  to  board  in  one  of  his 
houses,  and  he  is  said  to  have  used  his  advan- 
tage to  charge  extortionate  prices  for  very  bad 
food.  Princeton  grappled  with  the  situation  in  a 
manner  characteristically  intelligent.  Certain  lead- 
ing undergraduates  tore  a  leaf  from  the  book  of 
the  extortionate  townsman.  They  went  to  Dean 
Fine  and  proposed  that  the  college  remodel  the 
old  commons  building,  so  as  to  give  each  club  a 
separate  apartment  and  then  capture  Red  Hat 
and  Dark  Blue  from  the  enterprising  townsman 
who  had  first  caught  them.  It  was  a  ludicrous 
comedy,  or  a  feat  of  statesmanlike  foresight,  as 
one  chooses.  So  was  the  result,  which  proved  all 
that  was  expected  —  and  more. 

The  new  commons  are  a  triumphant  success, 
both  financially  and  with  regard  to  the  cheapness 
and  quality  of  the  fare.  Excellent  food  is  to  be 
had  for  five  dollars  and  a  half  a  week.  In  the 
first  fortnight  after  arriving  at  Princeton,  small 

27 


PRINCETON 

groups  of  fifteen  freshmen  organize  the  nuclei  of 
clubs  and  are  given  separate  rooms  in  the  com- 
mons. Then  they  proceed  to  elect  other  freshmen, 
until  each  club  numbers  between  thirty  and  forty. 
Such  freshmen  as  are  not  elected  form  clubs  of 
their  own,  so  that  no  one  is  without  affiliation. 
So  far,  so  good. 

An  incidental  and  unforeseen  result  of  concen- 
trating the  life  of  the  underclassmen  in  the  college 
commons  was  to  intensify  the  system  of  social 
climbing  beyond  all  endurance.  The  question 
of  hat  followings  has  become  paramount.  Day 
and  night  the  freshman  is  obsessed  by  the  fear 
that  he  will  not  "  make  "  the  desired  sophomore 
eating-club.  Sometimes  a  group  of  men,  regard- 
ing themselves  as  in  a  different  class  from  the  rest 
of  their  club,  secede  and  join  with  another  similar 
group  of  malcontents  to  form  a  new  club.  Social 
politics  are  rife.  Nothing  could  be  more  perni- 
cious to  the  spirit  of  democracy. 

One  fellow  relates  a  plot  by  which  he  and  two 
other  men,  all  prominent  as  athletes,  were  pre- 
vailed upon  to  secede  to  a  certain  club  with  the 
express  intention  of  being  elected  to  the  leading 
offices  and  turning  the  incumbents  out  —  thus  in 

28 


A  COLLEGIATE  UNIVERSITY 

all  probability  ruining  their  chances  of  an  upper- 
class  club.  At  the  time  he  saw  nothing  wrong  in 
the  scheme,  though  he  now  looks  back  at  it  as 
the  most  unmanly  act  of  his  life. 

There  is  no  occasion,  however,  to  take  a  cen- 
sorious attitude  toward  these  Princeton  under- 
classmen. It  is  a  hard  alternative  that  faces  them. 
Between  the  club  man  and  the  non-club  man  in 
the  upper  classes  there  is  the  sharpest  of  all  dis- 
tinctions, painfully  signalized  by  the  brilliant 
hatband  the  club  men  wear.  It  is  a  manifest  case 
of  sheep  and  goats.  When  a  freshman  fails  of 
one  of  the  leading  hat  followings,  his  entire  col- 
lege life  is  a  failure  in  what  he  feels  to  be  its 
most  important  phase. 

The  college  faced  the  situation  with  all  its 
characteristic  resolution,  though  in  some  respects 
with  less,  as  it  seems,  than  its  characteristic  wis- 
dom. President  Wilson  proposed  two  reforms :  To 
introduce  the  system  of  residential  halls,  called 
"  quads "  and  modeled  on  the  English  college, 
and  to  abolish  the  upperclass  clubs,  or  at  least  to 
modify  them  so  as  to  destroy  their  present  elect- 
ive and  representative  character.  Dormitories  on 
the  campus  were  to  be  organized  in  units  of  two 

29 


PRINCETON 

hundred,  each  with  separate  commons,  and  the 
clubhouses  were  to  be  made  each  the  nucleus  of 
a  similar  non-elective  community. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  an  outsider,  as  I 
remarked  at  the  time,  the  measures  seem  to  be 
so  drastic  as  to  defeat  their  own  ends.  The  clubs 
are  about  the  most  valuable  social  asset  of  the 
college.  Lacking  much  of  the  oligarchic  power 
of  the  Yale  senior  societies,  they  are  no  less 
representative  of  the  best  spirit  of  the  under- 
graduate world.  They  have  their  origin  deep  in 
the  instincts  of  Princeton  life,  and  have  a  long 
and  most  honorable  association  with  the  Princeton 
spirit  at  its  best.  Their  alumni  are  among  the 
most  distinguished  and  powerful  graduates  of  the 
college,  and  the  clubhouses  afford  a  tie  of  ines- 
timable value  as  keeping  them  in  warm  and  close 
sympathy  with  its  needs.  To  put  the  axe  to  the 
root  of  the  system  is  to  blight  much  that  is  most 
precious  in  the  moral  life  of  the  institution. 

Moreover,  —  and  this  is  the  point  of  chief 
moment,  —  in  declaring  that  the  clubs  require 
to  be  disestablished  President  Wilson  underrated 
grossly  the  value  of  his  proposed  residential  halls. 
When  each  undergraduate  is  a  member  of  a  sepa- 

30 


A  COLLEGIATE  UNIVERSITY 

rate  hall,  with  its  facilities  for  pleasant  and  help- 
ful comradeship,  its  local  spirit  and  traditions,  its 
local  societies  and  athletic  teams,  the  club  ques- 
tion is  on  a  radically  different  footing.  Red  Hat 
and  Dark  Blue,  even  Green  Hat,  Light  Blue,  and 
the  rest,  might  still  persist  as  sophomore  clubs ; 
but  they  would  no  longer  be  eating-clubs.  Their 
members  would  not  only  eat,  but  sleep,  work,  and 
play,  as  members  of  different  halls.  Thus,  their 
social  influence  and  importance  could  not  fail  to 
diminish.  It  might  easily  become  a  stronger  boost 
toward  Ivy  to  dine  in  the  same  hall  and  play  on 
the  same  team  with  upperclassmen  already  Ivy 
members  than  to  belong  to  Red  Hat.  And  when, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  junior  year,  a  part  of 
one's  classmates  were  elected  to  Ivy,  Tiger  Inn, 
and  the  rest,  it  would  no  longer  be  a  case  of 
sheep  and  goats.  Men  who  failed  to  be  chosen 
would  still  have  a  normal  and  pleasant  life  within 
the  hall.  Those  who  were  chosen,  moreover, 
would  not  be  altogether  removed  from  the  old 
quad.  They  would  still  have  their  rooms  there 
for  sleep  and  for  study.  They  would  still  have 
the  general  life  and  traditions  of  the  hall  at  heart, 
ind  its  athletic  success.  In  the  end  it  would 

31 


PRINCETON 

probably  be  possible  to  forbid  men  to  dine  in 
their  clubs  before  senior  year.  The  halls  would 
minimize  the  evil  influences  of  the  clubs,  in  short, 
both  upperclass  and  underclass,  without  destroy- 
ing any  helpful  influence. 

If  the  halls  are  established,  Princeton  will  have 
a  further  resemblance  to  the  English  universities ; 
but  this  will  be  incomplete  and  ineffective  with- 
out the  upperclass  clubs.  At  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge the  social  life  has  a  dual  aspect.  Every 
man  is  a  member  of  a  college,  and  takes  part  in 
its  activities ;  but,  in  proportion  as  his  character 
and  abilities  warrant,  he  is  led  upward  and  out- 
ward into  the  broader  life  of  the  university, 
which  is  crystallized  in  organizations  roughly 
analogous  to  these  Princeton  clubs.  The  hall 
develops  men  for  the  university,  socially  and  in 
athletics ;  and  these  men  in  turn  bring  back  into 
the  hall  the  larger  spirit  of  the  whole  institution. 
To  abolish  the  upperclass  clubs,  in  short,  would 
sacrifice  the  most  vital  source  of  organized  de- 
mocracy and  solidarity  at  Princeton. 

All  this  is  no  mere  conjecture.  It  is  the  result 
of  a  careful  study  of  the  English  colleges  in  rela- 
tion to  the  university  clubs,  carried  on  during 

32 


A  COLLEGIATE   UNIVERSITY 

over  a  year's  residence  in  a  prominent  Oxford  col- 
lege, of  which  an  extended  account  may  be  found 
in  a  former  volume,  "  An  American  at  Oxford." 

The  result  of  the  president's  misconception  of 
the  value  of  university  clubs  was,  as  any  Prince- 
tonian  should  have  foreseen,  to  defeat  a  project 
which,  in  the  main,  was  most  admirable.  If  I 
may  trust  the  verdict  of  men  who  have  observed 
Dr.  Wilson  at  close  range,  he  is  a  man  of  tran- 
scendent ability  and  power  in  his  general  ideas, 
who  never  fails  to  appear  at  his  best  in  public 
speaking  and  on  paper,  but  who  lacks  a  prac- 
tical feeling  for  human  nature  in  the  concrete. 
If  so,  he  bears  a  close  resemblance  to  President 
Eliot  of  Harvard,  as  may  presently  be  seen.  Be 
that  as  it  may,  he  has  been  obliged  to  abandon 
his  projects,  at  least  for  the  time. 

In  the  end,  beyond  question,  he  will  effect  a 
reform  of  some  sort.  According  to  one  plan, 
backed  by  a  large  and  powerful  body  of  alumni, 
eating-clubs  are  to  be  abolished  in  the  freshman 
year,  the  entire  class  assembling  at  a  general 
commons,  while  in  the  sophomore  year  the  pre- 
sent dining  clubs  will  be  continued.  This  will 
have  the  advantage  of  keeping  close  to  the  lines 

33 


PRINCETON 

of  Princeton  life,  which  for  some  inscrutable 
reason  has  always  centred  in  eating.  But  it  has 
the  disadvantage  of  being  less  and  less  workable 
as  the  classes  become  larger.  A  system  of  resi- 
dential quads,  on  the  other  hand,  while  it  intro- 
duced a  new  and  vastly  valuable  element  into 
Princeton  life,  would  be  capable  of  indefinite 
extension  to  keep  pace  with  the  growth  of  the 
university.  If  relieved  of  the  incubus  of  a  mis- 
directed attack  on  the  upperclass  clubs,  there  is 
no  reason  why  it  should  not  in  the  end  be  effected. 
One  thing  is  certain.  Other  American  colleges 
are,  as  we  shall  see,  pushing  forward  toward  it 
with  rapid  strides. 

Taken  for  all  in  all,  no  college  or  university, 
so  far  as  I  know,  has  excelled  Princeton  in  in- 
spiring its  undergraduates  with  manly  simplicity 
and  earnestness.  No  doubt  the  very  seclusion  and 
democracy  of  the  life  tend  toward  excessive  boy- 
ishness and  a  lack  of  individuality.  During  four 
years  of  preparation  for  life,  life  itself  is  below 
the  horizon.  In  those  generously  beautiful  spring 
evenings  when  the  seniors  gather  on  the  campus 
and  sing  "Out  in  the  Wide,  Wide  World,"  hearts 
sink  at  the  dread  thought  of  the  final  separation 

34 


A  COLLEGIATE  UNIVERSITY 

and  the  forlorn  plunge  into  a  strange  life.  That 
song,  as  it  happens,  is  written  more  in  the  spirit 
of  laughter  than  of  tears ;  but  very  few  seniors 
realize  the  fact  when  they  sing  it.  They  are  more 
apt  to  have  streaming  eyes.  One  Princeton  gradu- 
ate I  know  gravely  wrote  a  magazine  essay  to 
tell  the  wide,  wide  world  the  glad  news  that  he 
had  not  found  it  so  very  much  worse  than  Old 
Nassau.  Yet  it  is  a  right  manly  sentiment  that 
inspires  the  singing  senior. 

After  commencement  the  new  graduates  troop 
down  to  the  station  and  gravely  boost  their 
departing  friends,  one  by  one,  through  the  car 
windows.  As  the  train  pulls  them  out  into  that 
wide,  wide  world,  those  who  are  left  lift  their 
hats  and  sing  their  eternal  loyalty  to  one  another 
and  to  Old  Nassau.  It  is  funny — in  the  way  that 
brings  a  lump  into  your  throat. 

To  have  lived  in  such  a  college  with  such  fel- 
lows is  a  precious  thing,  and  life  can  never  bring 
anything  else  that,  in  its  own  way,  is  half  as  dear. 
An  ideal  university  would  combine  this  organized 
democracy  of  good  fellowship  with  a  broader 
intellectual  horizon ;  but  as  yet  the  ideal  is  far 
off.  Few  graduates  of  real  universities,  perhaps, 

35 


PRINCETON 

would  sincerely  wish  that  they  were  Prince- 
tonians.  In  their  way  they  are  loyal,  too.  But  none 
of  them,  listening  to  the  campus  singing,  or  see- 
ing the  departing  seniors  lifted  though  the  car 
windows,  could  fail  to  appreciate  that  there  is 
one  particular  boost  in  life  which  he  has  missed. 


II 

HARVARD : 
A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

TN  a  recent  novel,  Mr.  David  Graham  Phillips 
-•-  describes  Harvard  --and  in  effect  stigma- 
tizes it  —  as  given  over  to  dilettantism  in  gen- 
eral, and  in  particular  to  imitating  the  English. 
The  idea  is  widespread  and  popular.  Proceeding, 
however,  from  a  graduate  of  Princeton,  which 
has  assimilated  the  Oxford  idea  of  tutorial  in- 
struction, and  is  endeavoring  to  assimilate  the 
Oxford  idea  of  residence  in  coordinate  colleges 
or  halls,  the  charge  certainly  has  its  humors. 

The  predicament  of  Harvard  is  exactly  the 
reverse.  As  the  academic  world  well  knows,  the 
dominant  spirit,  far  from  being  dilettante,  is  an 
austere,  even  sacrificial,  devotion  to  pure  science ; 
and  it  is  a  result  of  the  imitation,  not  of  English, 
but  of  German,  ideals  and  methods.  Several  uni- 
versities —  for  example,  Virginia,  Michigan,  and 
Brown  —  dispute  with  Harvard  priority  in  intro- 

37 


HARVARD 

ducing  the  scientific  spirit ;  while  others,  such  as 
Columbia,  Pennsylvania,  and  Johns  Hopkins, 
rival  her  in  present  devotion  to  it ;  but  there  can 
be  little  question  that  Harvard  has  exploited  it 
most  prominently  and  on  the  largest  scale. 

In  its  origin  —  it  was  founded  only  sixteen 
years  after  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims  —  Har- 
vard was,  like  Yale,  Princeton,  and  a  score  of 
other  institutions  that  followed  in  its  wake,  an 
exponent  of  the  English  ideal  of  collegiate  resi- 
dence and  of  general,  systematic  human  culture. 
Among  other  things,  it  was  the  first  to  respond 
to  the  athletic  spirit,  and  to  turn  out  winning 
teams.  But,  almost  from  the  outset,  it  developed 
radical  individualistic  tendencies,  which  have 
ceaselessly  gathered  strength.  Traditionally  Uni- 
tarian, or,  as  many  consider,  agnostic,  it  has, 
through  centuries,  stood  for  reason  and  liberty 
as  opposed  to  orthodox  belief.  Scientific  in  its 
methods  of  instruction,  it  has,  for  more  than  a 
generation,  turned  its  back  upon  our  native 
standards,  which  regard  character  and  manners 
as  of  equal  importance  in  education  with  the  in- 
tellect. As  Barrett  Wendell  once  remarked,  with 
as  much  truth  as  humor,  Yale  was  founded  fifty 

38 


A   GERMANIZED    UNIVERSITY 

years  after  Harvard  to  counteract  its  radical  ten- 
dencies, and  has  kept  half  a  century  behind 
ever  since,  until,  at  last,  it  has  taken  to  beating 
Harvard  in  athletics. 

The  influence  of  the  German  university  spirit 
has  been  traced  as  far  back  as  the  second  decade 
of  the  last  century.  Thomas  Wentworth  Higgin- 
son  has  published  letters  written  to  his  father, 
then  an  officer  of  the  university,  by  a  group  of 
young  Harvard  men  in  residence  at  Gottingen, 
in  1817-18,  among  them  George  Ticknor  and 
Edward  Everett.  With  passionate  earnestness 
they  recommend  German  ideals  to  their  alma 
mater ;  and  it  is  largely  due  to  a  long  succession 
of  foreign-trained  graduates  that  the  university 
has  been  Germanized.1 

Books,  not  men ;  science,  not  citizenship,  was 
what  Germany  stood  for.  The  difference  between 

1  Professor  Albert  Bushnell  Hart  wrote,  in  the  Boston  Tran- 
script, a  four-column  protest  against  these  present  views  of  Har- 
vard, which  deserves  attention  if  only  on  the  score  of  its  sheer 
acreage.  This  epithet,  Germanized,  as  applied  to  an  institution 
which  has  dormitories,  faculty  supervision  of  students,  and  ath- 
letic sports,  and  is  in  other  respects  widely  different  from  the  Ger- 
man universities,  he  copiously  derides.  According  to  this  quaint 
construction  of  the  language,  galvanized  iron  would  be  zinc,  and 
Bessemerized  steel  a  respectable  English  inventor. 

39 


HARVARD 

Harvard  and  Gottingen  was  that,  while  Harvard 
had  a  bare  twenty  thousand  unused  volumes, 
Gottingen  "consists  in  the  library."- — "We  have 
not  yet  learned  that  the  library  is  not  only  the 
first  convenience  of  a  university,  but  that  it  is 
the  very  first  necessity  —  that  it  is  the  life  and 
spirit  —  and  that  all  other  considerations  must 
yield  to  the  prevalent  one  of  increasing  and  open- 
ing it."  To-day  the  Harvard  library  is  the  largest 
in  the  country,  except  only  the  Congressional  and 
the  Boston  Public  libraries,  and  is  the  primary 
instrument  of  instruction.  Similarly:  "A  man  to 
be  a  scholar  must  have  learnt  to  give  up  his  in- 
terest in  the  common  occurrences  of  life,  in  the 
political  and  religious  controversies  of  the  coun- 
try, and  in  everything  not  directly  connected 
with  his  single  aim." 

An  ideal  so  narrow,  so  intense,  and  so  opposed 
to  all  our  national  instincts  and  traditions,  was 
slow  in  taking  root ;  but  since  1869,  when  Charles 
William  Eliot  became  president,  it  has  dominated 
Harvard. 

A  splendid,  if  portentous,  figure  —  this  young 
chemist  of  thirty-five,  who  took  our  oldest  and 
largest  university  in  his  palm  and  has  held  it 

40 


A   GERMANIZED    UNIVERSITY 

there  with  mastery  unimpaired  for  almost  forty 
years !  In  1870  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  then  a 
professor  in  the  Medical  School,  writes  of  the 
"  bland,  grave  young  man  "  to  his  friend,  John 
Lothrop  Motley.  "  King  Log  has  made  room  for 
King  Stork,"  he  says.  The  school,  situated  in 
Boston,  had  previously  managed  its  own  affairs, 
and  had  made  itself  "the  most  flourishing  de- 
partment connected  with  the  college."  But  the 
new  president  came  to  every  Faculty  meeting, 
and  kept  the  learned  doctors  up  till  midnight 
discussing  new  plans. 

.  Holmes  viewed  the  spectacle  with  the  eye  of  a 
humorist,  but  not  so  his  fellow  Faculty  members. 

"  How  is  it,"  one  of  them  asked,  "  that  we  have 
been  going  on  so  well  in  the  same  orderly  path 
for  eighty  years,  until  now,  within  three  or  four 
months,  it  is  proposed  to  change  all  our  meth- 
ods of  carrying  on  the  school?  It  seems  to  me 
extraordinary,  and  I  should  like  to  know  how  it 
happens." 

"I  can  answer  Doctor  's  question  very 

easily,"  said  the  bland,  grave  young  man.  "  There 
is  a  new  president." 

Holmes  comments :  "  The  tranquil  assurance 
41 


HARVARD 

of  the  answer  had  an  effect  such  as  I  hardly  ever 
knew  produced  by  the  most  eloquent  sentence  I 
ever  heard  uttered.  Eliot  has  a  deep,  almost 
melancholy-sounding  voice,  but  a  placid  smile 
on  his  face  that  looks  as  if  it  might  mean  a  deal 
of  determination,  perhaps  of  obstinacy." 

These  few  words  give  the  outline  of  the  man. 
Time  has  filled  it  in  with  light  and  shade,  but 
not  altered  it. 

The  first  step  in  Germanizing  Harvard  was  to 
shatter  the  old  hidebound  curriculum,  inherited 
from  the  English  universities.  This  regarded  a 
few  traditional  studies,  that  had  come  down  from 
the  Middle  Ages,  as  of  supreme  value  and  equally 
important  to  all  men.  Its  ideal  was  first  mental 
training  and  then  culture  in  the  humanities. 
Logic  and  mathematics,  philosophy  and  the  clas- 
sics, were  the  chief  of  its  diet.  But,  like  the  old 
woman  in  the  nursery  rhyme,  Harvard  could 
never  keep  quiet. 

The  scientific  awakening  of  the  nineteenth 
century  had  added  a  maze  of  new  branches  to  the 
tree  of  knowledge,  some  of  which  might  perhaps 
be  described  as  its  trunk.  Undergraduate  life, 
indeed,  the  entire  span  of  human  existence,  was 

42 


A    GERMANIZED    UNIVERSITY 

too  brief  to  compass  them  all.  The  practical  diffi- 
culty of  the  situation  might  have  given  the  ordi- 
nary mind  what  is  sometimes  called  pause.  Not 
so  the  scientific  mind.  It  is  the  first  article  in  the 
modern  creed  that  all  knowledge  is  of  equal  im- 
portance, all  training  of  equal  value,  provided 
only  that  the  knowledge  and  the  training  are  in 
the  line  of  accurate  classified  knowledge. 

This  is  no  abstract  theory.  It  is  rule  of  thumb 
—  the  glorious  guiding  principle,  if  you  will  — 
by  which  the  elective  system  has  been  erected. 
President  Eliot,  in  an  address  entitled  "  Aims  of 
the  Higher  Education,"  reprinted  in  his  volume 
on  educational  reform,  states  it  explicitly.  "  There 
is  to-day  no  difference  between  the  philologist's 
method  of  study  and  the  naturalist's,  or  between 
a  psychologist's  method  and  a  physiologist's.  Stu- 
dents of  history  and  natural  history,  of  physics 
and  metaphysics,  of  literature  and  the  fine  arts, 
find  that,  though  their  fields  of  study  are  differ- 
ent, their  methods  and  spirit  are  the  same.  This 
oneness  of  method  characterizes  the  true  univer- 
sity." 

From  year  to  year  during  the  early  nineteenth 
century  new  subjects  were  added  to  the  list  of 

43 


HARVARD 

courses  of  instruction.  At  the  same  time,  of 
course,  the  students  were  allowed  some  choice 
among  them.  At  first  this  was  limited  to  the 
senior  year,  and  then  to  the  two  upper  years ;  but 
under  President  Eliot  it  has  been  extended,  with 
one  or  two  trifling  exceptions,  to  the  entire 
course.  And  all  leading  American  universities 
have,  with  greater  or  less  reservations,  developed 
along  precisely  similar  lines. 

Thanks  to  the  vigor  and  success  of  the  presi- 
dent's reformation,  Harvard  now  ranks  on  its 
teaching  side  at  the.  head  of  American  univer- 
sities. As  for  the  college  proper,  whereas  once 
the  entire  instruction  could  be  taken  in  four 
years,  the  courses  now  offered  are  so  minute  and 
of  so  wide  a  range  that  they  could  scarcely  be 
exhausted  in  two  hundred  years.  The  university 
teaches  all  of  the  recognized  arts,  sciences,  and 
professions,  —  mining,  civil,  mechanical,  and 
electrical  engineering;  agriculture  and  forestry; 
medicine  and  dentistry  ;  law,  theology,  and  archi- 
tecture. All  of  the  departments  are  strong,  and 
many  of  them  of  the  very  first  rank. 

The  huge  mass  of  courses  of  instruction  in  the 
college  makes  the  graduate  school  the  foremost 

44 


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A    GERMANIZED    UNIVERSITY 

in  the  land.  If  Princeton  can  boast  the  intimate 
personal  instruction  of  its  undergraduates,  Har- 
vard is  at  an  equal  advantage  with  its  graduates. 
Throughout  the  Faculty  of  Arts  and  Sciences 
there  is  one  teacher  for  every  seven  of  the  taught, 
and  in  the  graduate  school  the  ratio  would  be 
far  higher. 

The  Medical  School,  which  dates  from  1782, 
when  the  first  professorship  of  medicine  was 
founded,  is  in  the  very  first  rank,  disputing  pri- 
macy with  Johns  Hopkins  in  Baltimore,  the  Col- 
lege of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  in  New  York, 
and  McGill  in  Montreal. 

The  Law  School,  established  in  1817,  is  the 
oldest  in  the  country,  and,  more  than  this,  stands 
head  and  shoulders  above  its  nearest  rival.  Its 
great  triumph  is  the  case  system.  Formerly,  the 
law  was  regarded  as  an  accomplished  fact,  a  thing 
to  be  taught  cut-and-dried  from  textbooks.  The 
new  idea  is  to  regard  it  as  an  evolution,  which  is 
to  be  understood  only  by  following  it  scientifi- 
cally, case  by  case,  through  the  legal  experience 
of  centuries.  The  old  method  is  quicker  and 
easier,  and  it  produces  lawyers  who  have  at  the 
outset  considerably  greater  readiness  and  effi- 

45 


HARVARD 

ciency  in  ordinary  court  practice.  The  Harvard 
innovation,  in  fact,  was  so  radical,  and  based 
upon  so  advanced  a  conception  of  the  law,  that  on 
its  adoption  a  rival  school  was  established  in  Bos- 
ton to  conserve  the  older  methods ;  but  this  has 
now  come  over  to  the  case  system.  Columbia 
resisted  mightily,  but  in  the  end  succumbed.  The 
textbook  system  is  now  relegated  to  law  schools 
whose  humble  aim  is  to  establish  their  students 
as  quickly  as  possible  in  a  paying  practice.  Even 
in  England  the  case  system  is  working  a  revolu- 
tion. Not  the  least  of  its  triumphs  is  the  fact 
that  an  increasingly  large  number  of  Yale  gradu- 
ates resort  to  the  Harvard  Law  School,  forsaking 
the  Law  School  at  New  Haven,  which  still  abhors 
the  new  methods.  It  is  said  that  President  Eliot 
deserves  the  credit  for  the  establishment  of  the 
case  system  scarcely  less  than  Professors  Lang- 
dell  and  Ames,  who  originated  it. 

The  university  has  been  equally  radical,  and 
equally  successful,  in  insisting  on  uniformly  high 
standards  in  its  entrance  requirements.  In  the 
struggle  to  gain  students,  most  American  institu- 
tions have  been  willing  to  let  down  the  bars. 
The  entrance  requirements  of  Harvard  college 

46 


A    GERMANIZED    UNIVERSITY 

have  long  been  the  highest  in  the  country.  The 
Law  School,  Medical  School  and  Divinity  School 
all  require  a  recognized  degree  of  B.  A.,  or  its 
equivalent  in  an  entrance  examination.  The  asso- 
ciation of  American  universities  has  lately  fol- 
lowed Harvard  and  other  leaders  in  this  matter 
to  the  extent  of  refusing  standard  rank  to  insti- 
tutions that  do  not  require  at  least  one  year  of 
college  work  as  a  prerequisite  to  professional 
study.  In  spite  of  its  high  standards  for  admis- 
sion, Harvard  has  kept  in  the  lead  among  our 
universities  in  numbers  as  well  as  in  instruction 
—  or,  as  it  is  more  accurate  to  say,  in  numbers 
because  in  instruction. 

In  a  word,  under  President  Eliot  Harvard  has 
transformed  itself  from  a  typical  English  college, 
with  at  best  embryonic  potentialities  of  a  univer- 
sity, into  an  institution  which,  in  the  spirit  and 
scope  of  its  instruction,  compares  not  unfavorably^ 
with  the  foremost  universities  of  Germany. 

This  gigantic  revolution  has  not  been  accom- 
plished without  grave  sacrifices.  In  his  inaugural 
address  the  young  president  exhorted  Harvard  to 
throw  off  its  native  New  England  reticence  and 
cultivate  expansiveness  of  heart  and  expressive- 

47 


HARVARD 

ness  of  character.  But  the  fact  has  only  to  be 
mentioned  at  Cambridge  to  evoke  a  broadly 
ironic  smile. 

Throughout  his  presidency  Dr.  Eliot  has  held 
aloof  alike  from  undergraduates  and  professors, 
and  his  aims  are  all  as  cold  as  they  are  clear.  In 
his  public  addresses  he  has  praised  the  traditions 
of  Harvard,  historic  and  literary,  and  has  pro- 
claimed high  ideals  of  citizenship  ;  but  in  pursuit 
of  his  one  absorbing  purpose  he  has  dissipated 
the  atmosphere  of  humanistic  culture  and  sacri- 
ficed the  spirit  of  manly  democracy  and  efficiency. 
He  has  made  Harvard  the  national  leader  in  a 
generation  of  vast  progress  in  education.  But 
the  whole  tendency  of  his  regime  has  been  to 
transform  the  college  that  once  inspired,  and  was 
inspired  by,  Emerson,  Holmes,  Lowell,  Long- 
fellow, Agassiz,  and  many  other  large  souls  dif- 
fusing light,  into  a  university  of  Germanized 
professors  and  students,  each  revolving  in  the 
narrow  circle  of  a  "  single  aim." 

Of  all  the  men  graduated  from  Harvard  in  al- 
most three  hundred  years,  President  Eliot  has 
signed  the  sheepskins  of  more  than  half ;  yet  only 
one  of  his  graduates  has  gained  world-wide  dis- 

48 


A    GERMANIZED    UNIVERSITY 

tinction,  and  he  is  best  known  as  a  Harvard  man 
by  his  frank  criticism  of  the  president. 

A  single  trifling  anecdote,  grimly  humorous, 
will  tell  what  the  past  thirty-eight  years  have 
meant  to  college  life  at  Harvard. 

The  centre  of  tradition  for  centuries  had  been 
the  Yard.  Here  the  undergraduates  lived  in  dor- 
mitories scattered  among  lecture-halls  and  labora- 
tories. They  easily  came  to  know  one  another 
and  their  common  instructors.  The  social  and 
intellectual  life  interpenetrated  and  were  one.  If 
any  existing  institution  tended  to  keep  Harvard 
united,  it  was  the  Yard.  But  with  the  scientific 
spirit  the  nineteenth  century  evolved  another  \ 
portentous  institution,  the  bathtub ;  and  the  build- 
ings in  the  Yard,  many  of  them  dating  from  the 
early  eighteenth  century,  had  no  proper  sanitary 
conveniences.  The  undergraduates  cried  aloud. 

The  president  answered  that  the  rentals  in  the 
Yard  buildings,  having  been  fixed  in  a  day  of 
dearer  money,  brought  no  adequate  return  for 
the  funds  invested.  The  university,  though  it 
has  a  larger  income  than  any  other  in  the  country, 
is  kept  poor  by  its  lavish  outlay  in  books,  labora- 
tories, and  advanced  professorships.  Its  annual 

49 


HARVARD 

deficit  is  from  thirty  to  sixty  thousand  dollars. 
The  sum  required  for  bathrooms  was  only  a  few 
hundred  dollars,  but  the  president  could  not 
afford  it. 

Certain  real-estate  speculators  had  a  keener 
social  sense.  They  built  private  dormitories, 
equipped  with  all  modern  requisites,  in  the  club 
quarter,  away  from  the  Yard.  Undergraduates 
flocked  to  them,  and  the  centre  of  Harvard  life 
shifted  to  Mount  Auburn  Street.  The  Yard  be- 
came more  than  squalid — unfashionable.  A  vital 
injury  had  been  done  to  the  college  spirit,  but 
for  a  time  no  official  notice  was  taken  of  the  fact. 

Then,  luxurious  private  dormitories  having 
multiplied,  there  came  a  time  when  the  rooms  in 
the  Yard  were  largely  unrented.  Every  year  the 
university  was  losing  as  much  as  proper  sanitation 
would  originally  have  cost.  And  the  university 
still  needed  funds  —  for  courses  in  the  History 
of  Allegory  and  the  theory  of  Photography.1 

1  Professor  Hart,  if  I  rightly  construe  a  difficult  piece  of  syn- 
tax, implies  that  these  courses  are  fictions  of  a  hectic  reportorial 
imagination.  In  point  of  fact,  they  are  fixed  realities  in  the  list 
of  electives  in  the  university  catalogue,  and  a  regular  part  of  the 
proffered  instruction.  The  fact  that  Professor  Hart  had  never 
heard  of  them  and  failed  to  look  them  up  is  a  sufficient  commen- 

50 


A    GERMANIZED    UNIVERSITY 

Then,  and  not  till  then,  the  president  bestirred 
himself  in  the  matter  of  shower-baths  and  sani- 
tary plumbing. 

The  most  significant  incident  in  this  epic  of 
the  bath  is  that  from  the  start  not  only  the  un- 
dergraduates, but  a  minority  in  the  Faculty,  real- 
ized and  deplored  the  mischief  that  was  being 
done  to  Harvard  life.  To-day  prominent  upper- 
classmen  leave  the  comfortable  private  dormito- 
ries to  colonize  the  old  Yard  buildings,  in  the 
hope  of  reviving  the  native  democratic  spirit.  But 
the  horse  has  been  stolen.  You  can't  pump  a  dry 
well  nor  galvanize  a  corpse.  The  Yard  is  no  more. 

The  wisest  and  most  human  foresight,  no  doubt, 
would  have  failed  to  keep  the  Harvard  social 
order  precisely  what  it  once  was.  The  small  con- 
centrated college  of  a  generation  ago  has  become 
a  vast  and  multifarious  university,  as  if  with  a 
single  bound.  The  formation  of  cliques  was  in- 
evitable, and  that  means  the  death  of  college 
democracy. 

Harvard  is  not  alone  here.  Yale,  whose  demo- 
cracy used  to  be  symbolized  and  expressed  by 

tary  on  his  case  against  me,  and  on  the  triviality  of  a  vast  por- 
tion of  Harvard  instruction. 

51 


HARVARD 

t 

sacred  gatherings  at  the  Fence,  now  laments  that 
there  are  three  Fences,  and  that  one  of  them,  in 
front  of  Vanderbilt  Hall,  is  the  hang-out  of  gilded 
youths,  who  do  not  mingle  with  those  at  the  other 
two.  Many  Yale  men  deplore  the  dominance  of 
the  secret  societies,  and  more  than  once  the  col- 
lege has  risen  in  open  and  sacrilegious  revolt 
against  it.  The  social  revolution  which  is  threat- 
ening Princeton  democracy  has  already  been 
described.  But  as  Harvard  is  the  largest  and  most 
radically  Germanized  of  our  universities,  it  is  at 
Harvard  that  the  disintegration  of  the  traditional 
college  spirit  has  proved  most  momentous. 

Under  the  old  order,  classes  of  less  than  a 
hundred  not  only  found  accommodations  in  the 
Yard  buildings,  but  assembled  daily  in  the  large 
prescribed  courses.  To-day  classes  of  four  to  six 
hundred  are  scattered  over  almost  a  square  mile. 
One  half  does  not  know  where  the  other  half 
lives.  By  virtue  of  the  elective  system,  moreover, 
the  classes  do  not  meet  in  lecture-halls  as  units,  but 
mingle  with  all  the  other  classes,  and  with  gradu- 
ates. One  half  does  not  know  the  other  half,  even 
by  sight.  There  are  members  of  the  Faculty  who 
do  not  know  a  large  proportion  of  their  fellow 

52 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

members.  The  college  commons  in  Memorial  Hall 
has  become  a  mob.1 

The  system  of  societies  and  clubs,  never  par- 
ticularly serviceable  in  developing  an  efficient  dem- 
ocratic spirit,  was  long  ago  strained  to  bursting.  , 
Theoretically,  there  are  two  representative  socie- 
ties, the  Institute  of  1770  for  underclassmen  and 
the  Hasty  Pudding  for  upperclassmen,  each  con- 
taining about  a  fifth  of  each  class.  In  point  of 
fact,  they  are  not  really  representative,  the  mem- 

1  The  editor  of  the  Harvard  Bulletin  has  called  me  to  book, 
offering  me,  if  I  can  prove  this  statement,  a  large,  round,  red 
apple.  It  is,  of  course,  possible  that  he  should  find  reason  and 
order  in  a  system  under  which  a  thousand  or  more  students  are 
served  by  slap-dash  negroes  with  tasteless  food  cooked  wholesale, 
while  visitors  to  a  great  seat  of  learning  throng  the  galleries  "  to 
see  the  animals  feed."  He  may  even  approve  of  club  tables,  the 
men  who  sit  at  which  often  get  together  on  the  spur  of  the  mo- 
ment, and  have  no  other  interest  in  common  than  the  desire  to 
have  a  fixed  seat  of  their  own  at  meals.  He  may  possibly  admire 
"  hotel "  tables  where  men  are  mussily  served  in  hurried  se- 
quence. To  demonstrate  to  him  that  such  a  re'gime  is  both  un- 
desirable and  needless  it  would  be  necessary  to  initiate  him  into 
the  admirable  order,  the  social  convenience,  and  the  excellent 
cooking  of  the  hall  of  an  English  college.  But  to  do  so  would 
leave  me  his  sorrowing  creditor  —  to  the  extent  of  one  decent 
meal,  minus  one  large,  round,  red  apple.  The  reader  who  is 
willing  to  take  my  word  may  find  a  description  of  dinner  in  an 
English  hall  in  An  American  at  Oxford. 

53 


HARVARD 

bership  in  both  being  practically  determined  in 
the  freshman  year ;  for  it  is  a  rare  exception  when 
a  man  not  in  the  Institute  is  elected  to  the  Pud- 
ding. And  both  are  practically  powerless  in  form- 
ing and  directing  college  spirit,  for  both  are  little 
more  than  a  shell  for  various  small  inner  clubs, 
which  are  the  real  kernels  of  social  Harvard. 

And  these  kernels,  as  it  happens,  are  sterile. 
The  clubs  are  intense  rivals,  and  compete  for  the 
men  on  the  first  tens  of  the  Institute,  so  that 
their  membership  is  virtually  determined  early  in 
the  sophomore  year.  They  seldom  elect  men  who 
devolop  later,  as  many  do,  especially  in  the  more 
serious  and  vital  activities  of  college  life.  In  this 
respect  they  are  but  little  better  than  warring 
fraternities  who  rush  sub-freshmen  and  freshmen. 
To  their  members  they  are  eminently  pleasant 
abodes  of  the  best  of  good  fellowships  and  frater- 
nal feeling.  They  are  the  source  and  the  reservoir 
of  the  gentlemanly  ease  and  intelligent  charm 
that  have  long  been  the  best  traits  of  the  Har- 
vard manner.  "  You  can  always  tell  a  Harvard 
man,"  James  Barnes  of  Princeton  once  remarked. 
"  But  you  can't  tell  him  much."  Some  of  the 
clubs  have  traditions  and  memorabilia  dating  from 

54 


A  GERMANIZED   UNIVERSITY 

the  eighteenth  century,  full  of  the  charm  and 
the  color  of  liberal  college  life.  The  Porcellian 
Club  has  erected  a  gate  at  the  entrance  to  the 
Yard  opposite  its  clubhouse,  and  dedicated  it  to 
its  ancient  founder,  giving  him  his  "addition" 
of  S.  T.  D.  in  large  capitals.  It  is  a  subtly  beau- 
tiful gate,  and  it  involves  an  even  more  subtly 
beautiful  pleasantry,  for  the  modern  Porcellian 
man  reminds  one  of  a  Doctor  of  Systematic  The- 
ology only  because  he  is  so  different. 

Pleasant  as  the  clubs  are,  however,  they  are 
prejudicial  to  college  life  in  that  they  make 
against  democracy  and  efficiency.  This  their  own 
members  freely  admit.  Once  in  them,  sopho- 
mores have  nothing  to  gain  from  their  classmates, 
nothing  to  fear  from  them.  Worse  than  this, 
the  clubs  are  not  able  to  take  any  strong  position 
of  leadership,  as  they  would  honestly  like  to  do. 
Not  being  representative,  it  would  be  as  absurd 
as  it  would  be  impossible  to  assume  general  au- 
thority and  responsibility.  Mr.  E.  S.  Martin  has 
described  the  clubs  as  a  sort  of  social  pool  pocket, 
on  getting  into  which  a  man  tends  to  fall  out  of 
the  game  of  undergraduate  life.1 

1  As  originally  written  this  passage  read,  "  is  definitively  out 

55 


HARVARD 

There  is  a  sorry  contrast  here  with  the  sister 
universities.  The  eating-clubs  at  Princeton  wisely 
limit  themselves  to  upperclassmen,  and  patriot- 
ically forbear  to  vie  with  one  another  in  electing 
new  members.  The  Yale  senior  societies  are  the 
pinnacles  of  a  social  system,  still  in  a  large  mea- 
sure democratic  and  representative,  which  leads 
upward  from  the  freshman  year,  and  so  wields  a 
power  for  good  that  is  in  effect  oligarchic.  The 

of  the  game  of  undergraduate  life."  A  Harvard  club  man  wrote 
Mr.  Martin,  himself  a  member  of  the  Porcellian,  objecting  that 
"  although  some  of  the  men  in  the  clubs  cut  themselves  off  en- 
tirely from  college  activities,  yet  it  is  also  evident  that  the  back- 
bone of  many  of  our  athletic  teams,  especially  the  crewjs  and 
football  teams,  are  formed  by  club  men."  Mr.  Martin  wrote  to 
the  Harvard  Bulletin  as  follows:  "  Mr.  Corbin  seems  to  have  read 
a  piece  of  mine  that  was  published  ten  years  ago  (May,  1897)  in 
Scribner's  Magazine.  I  have  looked  the  piece  up  and  it  does  not 
seem  to  me  to  close  the  door  of  hope  so  conclusively  as  Mr.  Cor- 
bin suggests.  I  find  this  passage  :  '  For  superior  men  who  are 
too  active  to  be  pocketed  the  clubs  are  pleasant  without  being 
unprofitable.  ...  It  depends  upon  the  man.'"  Yet  this  very 
correction  emphasizes  the  point  I  was  driving  at.  The  clubs  are 
not  primarily  representative,  and  instead  of  affording  the  nat- 
ural leader  a  point  of  vantage  for  influencing  college  life,  they 
place  a  barrier  between  him  and  his  college  mates  which  it  takes 
exceptional  ability  and  energy  to  surmount.  When  a  club  man 
takes  part  in  undergraduate  activities  he  does  so  as  an  individual, 
not  as  a  democratically  chosen  representative. 

56 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

social  and  athletic  superiority  of  Yale  and  Prince- 
ton to  Harvard  is  due  not  so  much  to  a  difference 
in  the  character  of  the  undergraduates  as  to  the 
superiority  in  the  systems,  and  most  of  all  to  the 
fact  that  the  Faculty  and  the  alumni  regard  a 
democratic  efficiency  as  of  vital  importance  in 
undergraduate  life,  and  strenuously  cultivate  it. 

President  Eliot  has  often  taken  a  hand  in  club 
matters,  as  in  the  case  of  the  alleged  barbarity  of 
the  Dickey  initiations,  but  he  has  only  threatened 
to  abolish,  never  attempted  to  build  up.  As  long  as 
the  clubs  have  created  no  newspaper  scandal  they 
have  been  left  to  themselves.  The  college  which 
the  young  president  exhorted  to  become  more 
human  and  fraternal  has  lately  been  described, 
and  not  without  reason,  as  a  social  orphan  asylum. 

Under  such  a  regime,  the  Harvard  spirit,  once 
celebrated,  is  falling  into  sad  decay.  The  mental 
alertness  is  still  there.  A  freshman,  being  asked 
to  give  an  example  of  anti-climax,  quoted  the 
pious  New  Haven  song,  "  For  God,  for  country, 
and  for  Yale."  When  Mrs.  Poteat,  distressed  by 
seeing  Yale  men  smoke,  declared  that  she  would 
rather  send  a  boy  to  hell  than  to  Yale,  a  Harvard 
man  suggested  that  his  university  change  its 

57 


HARVARD 

motto  so  as  to  read  :  "To  Yale  with  Hell."  There 
is  as  much  of  truth  as  conceit  in  the  Cambridge 
saying  that  Harvard  is  Athenian  and  Yale  Boeo- 
tian and  Spartan.  But  there  was  a  time  when 
Harvard  undergraduates  were  the  equals  of  their 
rivals  in  other  things  than  satire.  The  university 
has  very  largely  lost  its  power  of  social  assimila- 
tion. 

A  well-known  professor,  walking  through  the 
Yard,  met  a  youth  who  seemed  so  forlorn  and 
troubled  that  he  was  prompted  to  ask  :  "  Are  you 
looking  for  anybody?  "  Theyoung  man  answered : 
"  I  don't  know  anybody  this  side  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains."    Whether   from    shyness    or   from/* 
pride,  many  men  hold  Harvard  degrees  whose 7 L 
acquaintance  at  Cambridge  is  scarcely  greater.1!  J 

1  My  critics  have  objected  that  the  subject  of  this  anecdote 
was  a  freshman,  that  he  subsequently  became  thoroughly  happy 
at  Harvard,  and  that  a  number  of  his  brothers  who  followed  him 
were  equally  prosperous  and  contented.  All  this  is  interesting, 
but  does  not  alter  the  case.  The  obvious  fact  is  that  when  a  fresh- 
man arrives  at  Harvard  he  receives  no  personal  welcome,  or  at 
best,  in  recent  years,  only  an  attempt  at  a  welcome  which,  as  I 
shall  show,  is  clumsy  and  ineffective.  To  get  into  any  real  associa- 
tion and  sympathy  with  his  college  mates  he  depends  on  his  own 
natural  push  or  the  chance  kindness  of  a  stranger.  Where 
classes  are  smaller  and  more  homogeneous,  and  especially  where  a 

58 


A  GERMANIZED   UNIVERSITY 

When  I  was  teaching  composition  at  Harvard  one 
student  wrote  a  daily  theme  on  hearing  steps  on 
the  stairs  of  the  entry  in  which  he  lived.  For  the 
first  time  in  years,  he  said,  he  prayed  —  that  it 
might  be  some  one  coming  to  see  him.  A  graduate 
once  published  a  paper  in  the  "  Harvard  Monthly  " 
on  the  decadence  of  Harvard  manners,  his  text 
being  the  fact  that  a  student  entering  the  library 
in  front  of  him  had  let  the  door  slam  in  his  face. 
The  scholastic  reputation  of  the  university  is  at- 
tracting increasing  numbers  whose  experience  of 
Harvard  is  limited  to  the  classroom.  Lamb  de- 
clared that  there  are  books  which  are  not  books 
at  all,  as,  for  example,  timetables  and  collected 
sermons.  There  is  little  help  for  that.  But  there 

system  of  social  assimilation  prevails  such  as  I  have  described  in 
my  book  about  Oxford,  the  case  is  quite  the  reverse.  Mr.  Mar- 
tin remarked  to  me  that  he  was  glad  to  have  sent  his  son  to 
Harvard  and  that  in  general  the  university  "  gives  satisfaction." 
Another  critic  confronted  me  with  the  fact  that  President  Roose- 
velt's sons  are  Harvard  men,  in  spite  of  his  criticisms  of  Presi- 
dent Eliot,  and  apparently  without  regret.  I  may  add  that  I 
prevailed  upon  my  own  brother  to  go  to  Harvard,  and  would  do 
the  same  by  any  young  man  who  showed  sufficient  character  to 
make  friends  against  odds  and  sufficient  wisdom  and  ability  to 
avoid  a  fair  number. of  the  pitfalls  of  the  elective  system.  But 
that  does  not  prevent  me  from  seeing  that  the  difficulties  of 
Harvard  life  are  many,  or  from  wishing  them  fewer. 

59 


HARVARD 

j  is  no  reason  why  a  college  man  should  not  be  a 

\college  man. 

Here  again  the  will  for  righteousness  is  strong. 
Every  freshman  is  appointed  an  adviser,  whose 
duty  it  is  to  initiate  him  into  the  college  life. 
But,  as  I  myself  discovered  after  persistent  efforts, 
and  as  many  another  will  sadly  admit,  the  adviser 
is  seldom  able  to  do  more  than  to  help  his  fresh- 
man make  out  a  list  of  electives  that  do  not  clash 
in  lecture  hours  and  examinations.  There  is  no 
normal  and  natural  basis  for  association.  Certain 
hospitable  members  of  the  Faculty  have  after- 
noons at  home  with  tea,  and  ladies  connected 
with  the  university  give  teas  at  Phillips  Brooks 
House.  But — teas!  The  most  hopeful  institution 
is  a  series  of  beer  nights  which  upper  classmen 
give  to  the  incoming  freshmen,  in  the  hope  of 
making  them  friendly  with  one  another.  But, 
with  the  best  of  intentions,  such  functions  can 
only  be  occasional  and  incidental.  Last,  as  first, 
Harvard  is  disorganized. 

The  students  in  the  graduate  school,  who  are 
largely  from  other  colleges,  have  lately  had  a 
building  set  apart  for  them  with  a  common  room 
for  social  conversation,  which  is  liberally  supplied 

60 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

with  periodicals.  This  is  a  long  step  in  the  right 
direction,  but  still  falls  short  of  the  desirable  and 
easily  attainable  life  of  a  thoroughly  organized 
residential  community.  In  the  professional  schools 
there  are  very  serious  and  efficient  law  clubs, 
medical  clubs,  and  so  forth ;  but  on  the  social  side 
there  is  not  even  the  pretense  of  hospitable  assim- 
ilation. A  graduate  of  the  University  of  Chi- 
cago, who  spent  a  year  at  the  Law  School,  sat 
next  a  Harvard  man  who  had  been  a  prominent 
athlete,  and  in  the  entire  nine  months  did  not 
receive  so  much  as  a  nod  of  recognition.  On  the 
last  day  of  the  final  examination  period,  when 
there  could  no  longer  be  any  motive  for  scraping 
favor,  he  met  his  benchmate  in  the  street,  and, 
his  Western  instincts  getting  the  better  of  him, 
as  he  said,  nodded  to  him.  There  was  no  sign  of 
recognition.  Naturally,  he  put  down  the  Harvard 
man  as  a  snob.  It  is  quite  as  likely  that  the  cut 
was  unintended.  In  so  large  a  place  without 
social  ties  one  gets  used  to  regarding  most  men 
as  strangers. 

Whether  not  unkind  or  most  unkind,  however, 
that  cut  gave  particular  zest  to  another  anecdote. 
In  the  class  discussions  the  Harvard  man  was 

61 


HARVARD 

accustomed  to  begin  with  the  cold,  if  courteous, 
prelude :  "  The  man  who  has  just  spoken  — - 1  beg 
his  pardon :  I  don't  know  his  name."  Now,  as 
I  have  said,  there  are  Yale  men  in  the  Law  School, 
and  one  of  these  met  the  courteous  prelude  with 
the  retort :  "  My  name  is  R — — ,  and  I  played 
opposite  you  last  year  on  the  Yale  eleven."  The 
score  of  that  game  was  still  a  sore  remembrance. 
What  my  informant  did  not  see  was  the  fact  that 
the  retort  was  equally  characteristic  of  the  "  sis- 
ter "  university. 

As  against  the  social  system  of  other  universi- 
ties, Harvard  offers  a  great  and  unique  advantage 
—  virtually  limitless  scope  to  individual  effort. 

This  extends  even  to  the  club  life.  If  a  man 
considers,  as  he  very  reasonably  may,  that  one 
of  the  chief  opportunities  of  a  university  is  to 
extend  his  acquaintance  among  young  fellows  of 
family  and  position,  he  will  find  the  way  open 
to  him.  The  social  and  sectional  snobbishness,  of 
which  one  hears  so  much,  is  mainly  an  accident 
—  a  result  of  the  fact  that  a  large  proportion 
of  the  undergraduates  come  from  New  England 
families  or  schools,  and  have  already  a  large 
circle  of  acquaintances  when  they  arrive.  It  can 

62 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

be,  and  yearly  is,  overcome  by  boys  from  the 
farm  and  the  workshop,  from  the  West  and 
the  South.  In  a  letter  to  a  Boston  paper,  five 
years  ago,  Dean  Briggs  mentioned  by  name  two 
country  boys,  recently  dead,  Marshall  Newell  and 
Adelbert  Shaw,  who,  by  virtue  of  high  character 
and  unusual  ability  in  athletics,  were  imme- 
diately taken  into  the  leading  clubs,  and,  what 
is  more,  strongly  impressed  themselves  upon  the 
student  body  at  large.  There  are  many  still 
alive  whose  story  is  similar. 

Even  without  athletic  ability,  or  without  special 
talents  of  any  sort,  a  man  may  make  his  way! 
anywhere.  It  is  well  for  him  to  prepare  at  one 
of  the  great  Eastern  schools,  so  that  he  may 
have  prominent  acquaintances  in  the  critical 
freshman  year.  It  is  indispensable  that  he  be 
well-mannered  and  capable  of  giving  as  well  as 
receiving  the  pleasure  of  good  comradeship. 
But  he  will  encounter  no  real  barrier  beyond 
the  inevitable  one  of  the  size  and  diversity  of  the 
classes.  A  recent  graduate,  having  gone  to  Chi- 
cago to  start  in  business,  remarked  to  a  grad- 
uate of  the  university  on  the  Midway,  that  in 
a  few  weeks  he  had  made  friends  of  four 

63 


HARVARD 

of  the  most  prominent  merchants  of  the  West, 
through  their  sons,  whom  he  had  known  at 
Cambridge.  In  almost  any  city  he  would  have 
been  at  an  equal  advantage. 

It  is  true  that  no  distinction  at  Harvard  is  as 
valuable  in  this,  or  in  any  way,  as  membership 
in  one  of  the  Yale  senior  societies.  But  it  is 
also  true  that  to  fail  of  the  coveted  distinctions 
is  far  less  damaging.  There  are  many  clubs  out- 
side of  the  traditional  system  which,  though  ob- 
scure to  the  public  eye,  are  highly  pleasant  and 
profitable.  Several  fraternities  have  active  chap- 
ters at  Harvard,  with  commodious  and  hand- 
some houses.  Though  many  men  without  family 
or  money  become  socially  prominent,  many  who 
have  both  fail  to  do  so,  and  join  the  outside  clubs 
and  fraternities,  or  remain  unattached.  Wealth, 
even  family,  is  no  open  sesame,  as  poverty  and 
a  humble  origin  are  no  barrier — provided  a  man 
is  capable  of  working  his  own  way. 

No  Harvard  man  feels,  or  has  cause  to  feel, 
the  bitterness  of  the  Yale  man  who  is  not 
"tapped."  A  member  of  the  Committee  of  Ad- 
missions of  the  University  Club  of  New  York 
lately  remarked  that  a  Yale  man  who  had  failed 

64 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

of  the  senior  societies  was  regarded  by  his  class- 
mates as  standing  in  need  of  apology,  and  was 
far  less  likely  to  be  elected  than  a  Harvard  man 
in  similar  position,  whose  classmates  judged  him 
merely  for  what  he  was.  What  Harvard  has  lost 
as  a  social  unit  Harvard  men  have  gained  as 
individuals. 

Professor  Palmer  tells  a  story  highly  illustra- 
tive of  the  diverse  individuality  of  Harvard  un- 
dergraduate interests.  David  A.  Wells  was  to 
deliver  a  lecture  on  banking,  as  a  guest  of  the 
Economics  Club.  On  his  way  to  the  lecture,  Pro- 
fessor Palmer  passed  a  hall  which  was  crowded 
with  a  mass  meeting  of  undergraduates,  discuss- 
ing some  knotty  question  of  Athletic  relations 
with  Yale.  It  seemed  a  foregone  conclusion 
that  there  would  be  no  audience  for  the  distin- 
guished visitor.  But,  as  it  turned  out,  the  lecture 
hall,  which  seats  four  hundred,  was  crowded 
with  undergraduates  to  the  walls  and  doors. 
After  the  lecture  Professor  Palmer  went  to  a 
meeting  of  the  Classical  Club  in  the  rooms  of 
one  of  his  students,  and  found  there  almost 
thirty  undergraduates,  oblivious  alike  of  bank- 
ing and  of  Yale. 

65 


HARVARD 

No  university,  to  my  knowledge,  offers  a 
richer  and  more  varied  field  of  activity  to  young 
men  of  serious  interests.  Every  department  of 
instruction  has  its  organization,  similar  to  those 
in  the  professional  schools,  such  as  the  Deutscher 
Verein,  the  Cercle  Frangais,  the  English  Club, 
the  Economics  Club,  and  the  Classical  Club  to 
which  Professor  Palmer  refers.  The  outside 
world  hears  of  them  mainly  through  the  dis- 
tinguished lecturers  they  attract,  and  through 
their  scholarly  and  illuminating  productions  of 
the  masterpieces  of  Greek  and  Elizabethan 
drama,  of  the  classics  of  France  and  Germany. 
But  their  greatest  work  is  in  bringing  professors 
and  students  together  under  the  inspiration  of  a 
common  intellectual  enthusiasm.  And  in  spite 
of  the  non-sectarianism  of  Harvard  theology, 
and  the  reputation  of  the  university  for  free 
thought,  it  has  and  cherishes  a  vigorous  religious 
life.  There  are  student  organizations  in  most 
of  the  leading  denominations,  and  in  Phillips 
Brooks  House  they  have  a  collective  home, 
spacious  and  beautiful,  and  consecrated  to  the 
memory  of  a  great  and  abiding  spirit.  There 
is  much  truth  in  a  saying  of  Dean  Briggs — 

66 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

that  if  a  man  is  interested  in  anything  outside 
of  himself  he  will  get  human  fellowship  at  Cam- 
bridge. 

Like  Harvard  snobbishness,  Harvard  indiffer- 
ence is  a  myth  of  the  careless  observer.  The 
Harvard  "  Lampoon  "  —  which,  by  the  way,  is 
the  oldest  of  American  journals  of  its  kind,  and 
father  of  "  Life  "  —  once  had  a  pithy  liner  on 
this  topic:  "Harvard  indifference — I  don't  care 
if  I  do."  Such  snobbishness  and  indifference  as 
exist  are  very  largely  the  result  of  intense  ab- 
sorption in  the  interest  nearer  at  hand. 

This  is  only  to  say,  however,  that  the  German 
ideal  of  education  has  inspired  Harvard  also  in 
its  social  life.  Each  man  has  his  "single  aim." 
and  is  given  every  facility  for  pursuing  it.  But 
in  the  process  it  fares  ill  with  all  the  forces  that 
make  for  general  and  fundamental  character- 
building.  In  one  way  Dean  Briggs's  phrase  is 
not  quite  accurate.  A  Harvard  man's  interests 
are  not  "outside  of  himself"  —  or,  if  they  are, 
he  finds  every  force  of  the  place  in  array  against 
him.  As  a  collection  of  little  men,  each  keen  on  I 
his  own  beloved  activity,  Harvard  is  magnificent. ' 
As  a  human  institution,  as  an  ancient  and  fruit- 

67 


HARVARD 

ful  tradition,  as  a  definite  and  united  force, 
social  and  moral,  it  is  a  byword  and  a  jest. 

There  is  no  better  barometer  of  the  tone  of 
college  lif e  than  athletics.  For  better  or  for  worse, 
the  thing  an  American  undergraduate  cares  most 
about  is  that  his  college  shall  be  known  for 
manly  vigor  and  success  on  the  field  of  sport. 
That  is  the  reason  why,  to  the  popular  view,  Yale 
now  stands  in  the  lead  of  all  our  universities; 
and  no  true  Harvard  man,  I  think,  critical  though 
he  may  be  of  certain  excesses  of  the  enthusiasm 
for  athletic  victory  at  Yale,  can  fail  to  regard 
the  sister  and  rival  university  with  warm  admira- 
tion and  deep  humility. 

Harvard  men  are  individually,  as  I  think,  the 
best  sportsmen  in  the  world,  though  I  say  this 
without  any  hope  of  being  believed,  even  at  Har- 
vard. The  fact  remains,  however,  that  they  do 
not,  as  a  rule,  lay  that  exaggerated  emphasis 
upon  the  mere  fact  of  winning  which  has  dis- 
torted the  spirit  of  true  sportsmanship  at  so  many 
American  universities,  and  led  to  the  use  on  the 
athletic  field  of  the  cutthroat  methods  of  the 
lower  business  world.  Harvard  has  often  seemed 
priggish  and  mistaken  in  its  athletic  policy,  and 

68 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

not  infrequently  has  been  so ;  but  the  fact 
remains  that  it  has  been  a  leader,  I  may  say  the 
leader,  in  the  regulations  which  are  stamping  out 
professionalism  from  American  college  athletics. 
To  young  men  whose  interests  in  life  are  so 
largely  serious  and  intelligent,  it  comes  natural 
to  regard  sport  as  —  sport. 

It  once  seemed  to  me  that  the  Harvard  spirit 
was  more  nearly  that  of  the  English  universities 
—  until  I  came  to  know  this  at  first  hand,  and 
found  that  its  much-lauded  temperance  was  little 
better  than  indifference.  The  Harvard  sporting 
spirit  is  at  once  sane  and  keen.  I  have  seen  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt  —  not  President,  but  police  com- 
missioner —  rouse  the  university  in  a  brief  hour's 
talk  to  the  acme  of  patriotic  enthusiasm.  And  the 
result?  There  was  the  social  system  to  reckon 
with.  Enthusiasm  had  no  means  of  focusing  and 
expressing  itself.  In  the  face  of  every  desire  to 
the  contrary,  patriotic  Harvard  resolved  itself 
into  a  welter  of  individuals,  each  revolving  in 
the  eddy  of  his  single  aim. 

And  then  there  is  "the  bland,  grave  young 
man."  Once,  after  fifteen  years  of  uninterrupted 
defeat  on  the  gridiron,  the  university  found  itself 

69 


HARVARD 

united  by  the  genius  and  the  enthusiasm  of  its  foot- 
ball captain.  The  undergraduates  had  regarded 
that  long  period  of  defeat  as  a  deep  disgrace  to 
the  college  they  loved.  And  after  the  captain  had 
labored  two  years,  with  the  labor  that  is  prayer, 
they  won.  Almost  any  college  man  can  imagine 
what  that  meant.  The  university  turned  out  in 
a  mass,  and  dragged  the  victorious  eleven  on  a 
coach  to  the  president's  front  door.  He  made 
them  a  speech  —  a  speech  of  congratulation.  He 
said  that  the  finest  feature  of  the  game  had  been 
the  rally  which  had  enabled  Yale  to  score  a  single 
touchdown  in  the  face  of  certain  defeat.1 

1  A  correspondent  who  also  heard  this  speech  assures  me  that 
President  Eliot  added  a  qualifying  clause,  saying  that  the  Yale 
rally  was  the  finest  feature  of  the  game  next  to  winning  it. 
Whichever  version  is  right,  the  fact  remains  that,  as  far  as  I 
knew,  the  men  who  heard  the  speech  went  away  with  the  sensa- 
tion of  having  had  a  bucket  of  water  cast  upon  their  spines  in 
their  solitary  hour  of  elation.  President  Eliot's  tactlessness  is  as 
celebrated  as  his  formal  correctness.  The  painful  memory  still 
lingers  of  the  speech  in  which  he  proclaimed  to  the  Mormons 
(Harvard  being  a  favorite  university  with  the  sect)  the  blessings 
of  religious  freedom  —  which  doubtless  was  not,  as  it  appeared  to 
the  country  to  be,  a  defense  of  polygamy.  Quite  lately  he  recom- 
mended to  the  Jews,  also  numerous  at  Harvard,  the  cultivation 
of  an  athletic  and  martial  spirit  as  a  valuable  corrective  to 
commercialism,  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  many  famous  athletes, 

70 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

Life  in  the  world  has  not  convinced  the  vast 
majority  of  Harvard  men  that  for  the  largest  of 
American  universities  to  be  the  most  signally 
unsuccessful  in  athletics  is  anything  else  than  a 
disgrace.  Men  of  our  race  and  time  instinctively 
regard  prowess  on  the  field  of  manly  sport  as  of 
no  less  value  in  the  training  of  character  than 
scientific  acquirements.  The  opinion  may  be 
wrong.  Yet  it  remains  true  that  for  a  man  to  get 
accustomed  to  defeat  in  a  cherished  ambition  is 
the  worst  possible  training  for  success  in  the 
affairs  of  the  world.  The  attempt  has  been  made 
to  abolish  Harvard  clubs  and  Harvard  intercol- 
legiate athletics.  But  it  is  beyond  the  power  of 
any  man,  however  bland  and  grave,  to  abolish 
human  nature.  Like  other  American  universities, 
overgrown  and  chaotic,  Harvard  will  in  the  end 
be  obliged  to  resort  to  constructive  reform. 

It  is  characteristic  of  Harvard  that  it  was  the 
first  to  propose  the  plan  of  dividing  the  student 
mob  into  coordinate  colleges,  or  halls,  in  imita- 
tion of  the  residential  features  of  the  English 

even  prize  fighters,  have  been  Jews,  and  that  during  the  Spanish 
War  a  regiment  was  patriotically  mustered  in  the  New  York 
Ghetto. 

71 


HARVARD 

colleges.  In  1894,  at  the  death  of  Frank  Bolles, 
secretary  of  the  university,  a  posthumous  paper 
was  published,  very  clearly  pointing  out  the  evil 
and  the  remedy.  Since  then  a  book  or  two  and 
several  papers,  in  the  "  Harvard  Graduates'  Maga- 
zine," have  been  published  urging  that  the  time 
had  come  for  correcting  excessive  Germanization 
by  reverting  to  the  original  type  of  our  universi- 
ties, with  regard  to  both  residence  and  teaching.1 
The  undergraduates  are  spontaneously  develop- 

1  The  university  is,  in  short,  divided  into  faction  on  the  sub- 
ject. When  this  paper  was  first  published,  the  Boston  Transcript 
reprinted  it  in  full,  with  an  editorial  welcoming  it  as  bringing 
into  public  notice  "for  the  first  time  .  .  .  with  the  frankness 
with  which  many  of  the  younger  and  the  older  alumni  have  long 
spoken  privately  to  each  other  .  .  .  the  doubts  and  the  question- 
ings, the  complaints  and  the  fears,  that  have  long  been  sim- 
mering among  them,"  and  strongly  seconded  the  plea  for  an 
organized  cultivation  of  the  humanities.  This  happened,  amus- 
ingly perhaps,  but  also  somewhat  pathetically,  at  the  season  of 
the  opening  of  the  college,  when  Cambridge  was  thronged  with 
eager  and  timid  new  freshmen.  Professor  Hart's  extensive  arti- 
cle (September  28,1907)  was,  as  it  appeared,  written  to  comfort 
and  reassure  them.  His  refutations  are,  however,  with  amazingly 
few  exceptions,  founded  on  misrepresentations,  even  obvious 
misquotations,  of  my  remarks.  Some  few  of  these  I  pointed  out 
in  the  Transcript  of  September  30.  Judging  by  his  accuracy  in 
this  case  I  am  obliged  to  concede  that  Professor  Hart  is  not  him- 
self a  Germanized  professor.  Under  his  attack  I  was  sustained 

72 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

ing  their  manner  of  living  along  the  desired  lines. 
Several  of  the  private  dormitories  encourage  the 
men  in  residence  to  choose  who  shall  fill  the  va- 
cant rooms,  so  as  to  build  up  a  compact  social 
life  and  traditions,  and  several  of  them  have  local 
crews  and  teams  that  compete  with  one  another. 
Randolph  Hall,  planned  by  an  intelligent  recent 
graduate,  is  built*  about  a  square  in  the  manner 
of  an  English  college,  with  a  beautiful  garden 
quadrangle ;  and,  with  the  addition  of  dining- 
commons,  for  which  room  has  been  left,  it  will 
be  a  complete  residential  hall.  Certain  public- 
spirited  Boston  alumni  have  bought  up  the  land 
between  the  university  and  the  river,  and  are 
holding  it  at  an  annual  expense  of  $20,000  until 
the  time  when,  it  may  be  hoped,  the  authorities 
will  be  more  hospitable  to  suggestion  toward  the 

and  soothed  by  many  Harvard  men,  notably  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  who  brought  to  my  notice  his  little  volume  Three  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  Addresses.  Though  neither  of  us  had  read  the 
other's  book,  each  had  made  the  same  diagnosis  of  the  case  of 
Harvard  and  advocated  the  same  remedy.  Graduates  of  other 
American  universities,  meantime,  wrote  me  of  similar  conditions, 
which,  as  will  develop  later,  are  characteristic  of  our  institutions 
in  general.  From  an  alumnus  of  the  University  of  Virginia  came  a 
letter  describing  at  length  conditions  infinitely  worse  than  those 
at  Harvard. 

73 


HARVARD 

improvement  of  the  conditions  of  undergraduate 
residence. 

Everything  will  depend  upon  President  Eliot's 
successor.  Lately,  when  there  was  some  irre- 
sponsible talk  about  electing  Theodore  Roose- 
velt, the  senior  member  of  the  Corporation  said 
that  that  would  be  impossible,  because  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  was  "  not  an  academical 
man."  The  remark,  however,  was  highly  academi- 
cal, and  suggests  that  the  first  requisite  of  the 
new  president  is  to  be  humanly  sympathetic  and 
progressive. 

One  of  the  chief  causes  of  all  these  social  evils 
is,  as  I  have  indicated,  the  elective  system.  And 
in  itself  it  is  an  evil.  The  essence  of  the  scien- 
tific spirit,  as  President  Eliot  has  so  clearly  shown, 
is  to  regard  all  knowledge  as  of  equal  value.  You 
may  study  the  French  Revolution,  or  (that  object 
of  Ibsen's  casual  satire)  the  domestic  industries 
of  Brabant  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  so  long  as 
you  study  them  scientifically  they  count  equally 
for  the  degree  in  arts.  You  may  study  literature 
and  science, — let  us  say  Petrarch  and  the  Theory 
of  Photography,  —  but  in  "  the  true  university  " 
the  spirit  and  the  methods  will  be  identical. 

74 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

One  or  two  examples  will  illustrate  the  prac- 
tical absurdity  that  has  come  from  the  attempt  to 
construct  a  system  of  education  on  this  theory, 
and  especially  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  rubric 
of  it  all  was  entire  freedom  in  the  choice  of  stud- 
ies. I  remember  —  if  I  may  speak  of  what  I 
know  best  —  I  remember  electing  a  course  that 
centred  in  the  French  Revolution  as  an  aid  to 
the  study  of  modern  literature  and  drama.  The 
lecturer  spent  hour  after  hour  droning  over  the 
series  of  constitutions  that  were  framed  and 
adopted  one  day  to  be  superseded  the  next.  What 
was  picturesque  and  dramatic  in  the  period,  even 
what  was  of  the  deepest  and  most  permanent 
significance,  he  neglected,  or  at  best  passed  it 
over  with  a  small  sarcasm  at  the  vanity  of  so  much 
passion  and  bloodshed.  Constitutions  were  matters 
of  scientific  record,  and  the  soul  history  of  a  great 
nation  in  its  greatest  crisis  was  not.  Again,  I 
elected  to  study  the  Elizabethan  drama.  The  pre- 
liminary course  was  a  minute  verbal  scrutiny  of 
five  of  the  plays  of  Shakespeare,  in  which  the 
consideration  of  literature  as  literature  was  casual 
and  incidental.  It  was  strongly  recommended 
that  the  student  repeat  this  course,  philologizing 

75 


HARVARD 

five  more  plays.  The  study  of  the  Elizabethan 
drama  as  such  was  limited  to  two  half  courses, 
which  were  in  no  wise  to  be  repeated  or  extended. 
In  order  to  get  at  the  drama  one  was  required 
to  plow  through  an  equal  dose  of  philology,  and 
it  was  recommended  that  the  dose  be  doubled. 
Decidedly,  the  play  was  not  the  thing.  The  thing 
was  words,  words,  words.  That  was  what  the 
glorious  proffer  of  free  election  came  to. 

A  well-ordered  general  culture  is  as  impossible 
under  the  new  regime  as  individual  study  was 
under  the  old.  Some  years  ago  a  student  who 
had  taken  his  degree  in  the  classical  department 
with  the  highest  distinction  went  to  Oxford  and 
entered  the  similar  department  of  Literce  Hu- 
maniores,  the  great  centre  of  English  humanistic 
culture.  But  this  Harvard  honor  man  was  a  mere 
philologer,  and  after  three  more  years  took  only 
a  third-class  English  degree. 

The  elective  system,  in  short,  is,  in  any  true 
sense  of  the  word,  very  far  from  elective.  And 
it  is  not  a  system.  Virtually  from  the  outset  an 
undergraduate  is  permitted  to  choose  from  scraps 
and  fragments  of  knowledge  whatever  pleases 
his  momentary  inclination ;  and  not  only  regula- 

76 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

tion,  but  guidance,  is  lacking;  for,  in  the  absence 
of  close  personal  relations  with  the  instructors, 
inevitable  in  the  all-important  freshman  and 
sophomore  years,  it  is  practically  impossible  to 
gain  sound  advice  in  planning  a  scheme  of  study ; 
and,  even  if  a  man  knew  how  to  lay  out  a  sys- 
tematic course,  he  is  prevented  from  doing  so  by 
conflicts  in  examination  hours  and  lecture  hours, 
unavoidable  when  the  mass  of  courses  is  so  great. 
The  very  ideal  of  a  liberal  education  has  been 
metamorphosed.  As  a  people  we  place  no  more 
value  upon  the  intellectual  than  on  the  moral  and 
social  side  of  undergraduate  life  —  upon  clean 
manhood  and  democracy  as  expressed  in  col- 
lege spirit;  upon  personal  courage,  self-control, 
and  chivalrous  generosity  as  expressed  in  true 
sportsmanship.  To  these  things  the  partisans  of 
the  "  true  university  "  pay  little  or  no  heed.  In 
his  weighty  volume  on  educational  reform  Presi- 
dent Eliot  does  not  consider  them.  But  as  to  the 
new  and  absorbing  passion  for  science  he  is  elo- 
quent. "  Science  has  engendered  a  peculiar  kind 
of  human  mind  —  the  searching,  open,  humble 
mind,  which,  knowing  that  it  cannot  attain  unto 
all  truth,  or  even  to  much  new  truth,  is  yet  pa- 

77 


HARVARD 

tiently  and  enthusiastically  devoted  to  the  pursuit 
of  such  little  new  truth  as  is  within  its  grasp, 
having  no  other  end  than  to  learn,  prizing  above 
all  things  accuracy,  thoroughness,  and  candor 
in  research,  proud  and  happy,  not  in  its  own 
single  strength,  but  in  the  might  of  that  host  of 
students  whose  past  conquests  make  up  the  won- 
drous sum  of  present  knowledge,  whose  sure 
future  triumphs  are  shared  in  imagination  by 
'  each  humble  worker.  Within  the  past  four  hun- 
dred years  this  typical  scientific  mind  has  gradu- 
ally come  to  be  the  kind  of  philosophic  mind 
most  admired  by  the  educated  class ;  indeed, 
it  has  come  to  be  the  only  kind  of  mind,  except 
the  poetic,  which  commands  the  respect  of  schol- 
ars, whatever  their  department  of  learning." 

Unquestionably  there  is  fire  in  these  words. 
But  is  it  not  the  kind  of  fire  which  inflames 
the  palm  that  has  held  a  block  of  ice  ?  What, 
after  all,  is  the  business  of  a  university  ?  Has  it 
not  a  duty  to  young  men  as  well  as  a  duty  to 
knowledge?  In  order  to  give  science  its  due,  is 
it  necessary  to  ignore  altogether  the  human  heart 
and  the  human  will  —  character  ? 

How  many  boys  go  to  college,  how  many  par- 
78 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

ents  send  them  there,  to  achieve  that  peculiar 
kind  of  human  mind  which  rejoices  not  in  its 
own  strength,  and  has  no  other  end  than  to  learn? 
It  may  seem  a  philistine  thing  to  say,  yet  it  is  in- 
dubitably true,  that  boys  go  to  college  and  their 
parents  pay  the  considerable  price  of  their  educa- 
tions, not  to  become  searching  and  humble,  but 
to  realize  the  proud  strength  of  the  human  mind 
and  heart ;  to  feed  their  minds  not  on  the  little 
new  truth  within  their  grasp — spare  diet !  —  but 
on  the  many  great  truths  of  nature,  history,  and 
art ;  not  to  narrow  their  spirits  to  minute  special 
research,  but  to  expand  them  in  contact  with  the 
Promethean  fire  of  the  great  personalities  and 
the  great  movements  of  civilization. 

In  all  this  we  have  assumed  that  the  German 
and  the  American  universities  are,  roughly,  par- 
allel institutions ;  for  that  has  been  the  tacit  as- 
sumption of  the  advocates  of  the  elective  system. 
The  fact  is  far  otherwise.  The  discipline  in  char- 
acter which  the  young  American  gets  on  the 
athletic  field,  in  the  close  community  and  under 
the  rigid  standards  of  college  life,  the  young  Ger- 
man gets,  in  a  form  suited  to  German  traditions 
and  standards,  in  the  army  or  the  bureaucracy. 

79 


HARVARD 

The  business  of  the  German  university  is  not  at 
all  to  discipline  character.  Quite  the  contrary,  it 
is  to  enfranchise  it  from  Kaiserism  and  red  tape. 
The  universities  are  the  great  strongholds  of  Ger- 
man liberty.  Their  watchwords  are  the  freedom 
to  learn  and  the  freedom  to  teach.  In  England 
and  America  liberty  and  truth  have  been  an  un- 
disputed heritage  for  two  centuries  and  more. 

Moreover,  the  German  university  is  built  on 
the  foundation  of  the  Gymnasium  and  the  Real- 
schule,  which  carry  the  student  at  least  as  far 
as  the  end  of  the  second  year  of  the  American 
college.  Now  the  instruction  in  these  German 
schools  is  thoroughly  organized  in  groups,  insur- 
ing that  the  body  of  a  student's  knowledge  shall 
be  coherent  and  symmetrical.  In  the  Gymna- 
sium, which  leads  upward  to  the  university,  an 
extended  study  of  the  ancient  classics  is  pre- 
scribed. The  German  secondary  schools  thus 
give  a  mental  discipline  which  one  looks  for  in 
vain  in  American  schools  and  colleges.  Many 
Harvard  men  report  that  they  first  learned  in  the 
Law  School  what  it  is  to  think  consecutively  and 
hard,  assembling  significant  details  into  a  vital 
whole.  Our  elective  system,  disorganized  to  the 

80 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

point  of  anarchy,  is  not  so  much  an  imitation  of 
German  methods  as  a  caricature  of  them. 

All  along  the  sense  of  the  great  body  of  edu- 
cated people,  and  of  a  large  proportion  even  of 
college  faculties,  has  been  against  the  doctrin- 
ary  extremes  to  which  we  have  carried  our  devo- 
tion to  foreign  ideals.  Almost  a  generation  ago 
Harvard  went  through  a  reaction  that  still  gives 
occasion  for  thought,  and  perhaps  also  for  a 
smile  of  far  from  subtle  irony. 

The  question  was  of  student  freedom.  To  the 
progressive  element  in  the  Faculty  it  seemed  a 
monstrous  thing  that  men  in  a  great  university 
should  be  subject  to  petty  police  regulations  in 
the  matter  of  residence  and  attendance  at  lec- 
tures. Here,  with  one  stroke  of  the  pen,  it  was 
possible  to  make  the  university  quite  like  Berlin, 
Leipsic,  and  Bonn. 

For  once  the  undergraduates  were  in  full  accord 
with  the  Faculty.  Midnight  potations  in  Boston 
were  no  longer  troubled  with  thoughts  of  the 
nine  o'clock  lecture  in  Cambridge.  To  the  moose 
hunter  it  ceased  to  be  evidence  of  the  eternal 
unfitness  of  things  that  his  season  in  the  woods 
was  cut  short  by  the  coming  term  time.  Skater, 

81 


HARVARD 

snowshoer,  and  tobogganer  partook  deeply  of 
the  joys  of  the  ice  carnival  in  Montreal.  At 
the  season  when  winter  had  become  darkest  and 
most  oppressive,  one  party  of  undergraduates 
woke  up  in  the  Grand  Central  Station  in  New 
York,  still  clad  in  their  evening  clothes.  After 
due  consideration,  they  decided  that  their  pur- 
pose the  night  before  must  have  been  to  spend 
the  month  of  February  under  the  clement  skies 
of  Bermuda ;  and,  stopping  only  to  buy  the 
necessary  flannels  on  Broadway,  they  embarked 
forthwith.  Lernfreiheit  bade  fair  to  eventuate 
in  a  sort  of  Lehrfreiheit  which  the  Faculty  had 
little  taste  for,  namely  an  entire  freedom  from 
any  one  to  lecture  to. 

The  Board  of  Overseers  and  parents  every- 
where were  even  more  deeply  moved.  The  life 
of  this  experiment  in  the  ways  of  the  "true 
university  "  was  short.  The  nine  o'clock  lecture 
has  ever  since  called  the  undergraduate  forth 
from  sybaritic  repose,  for  the  office  keeps  a 
jealous  eye  on  absences  from  lectures.  Hour 
examinations  at  irregular  intervals  prod  the 
r-slothful  to  intermittent  effort.  Harvard  College, 
in  short,  is  still  in  spirit  a  college. 

82 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

From  the  outset  it  should  have  been  evident 
that  the  spirit  and  needs  of  our  young  men  are, 
in  many  respects,  infinitely  removed  from  those 
of  the  German  undergraduate.  They  are,  in  fact, 
though  differing  in  many  details,  essentially  simi- 
lar to  those  of  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  man. 
In  the  English  universities  no  one  is  allowed  to 
leave  his  college  after  nine  o'clock;  and  to  remain 
without  the  walls  after  midnight,  on  whatever 
pretext,  is  a  crime  punishable  and  punished  with 
expulsion.  Far  from  considering  this  regime  an 
infringement  of  his  liberties,  the  young  Briton 
regards  it  as  part  and  parcel  of  a  system  which 
he  respects  and  loves.  Much  as  he  might  relish 
the  autumn  hunting  in  the  shires  or  the  spring 
gayeties  of  the  London  season,  he  loves  his  life 
as  an  undergraduate  more,  and  acquiesces  in  the 
college  gate  rules,  vexatious  though  they  often 
are,  as  the  very  foundation  of  the  social  and  ath- 
letic as  well  as  of  the  studious  life  of  his  college 
-  of  the  humanities,  in  short,  in  the  broad  and 
true  meaning  of  the  term.  For  the  American 
youth,  of  course,  the  full  rigor  of  the  English 
regulations  is  impossible;  but  he  might  be  led 
far  in  the  same  direction  if  it  were  made  evident 

83 


HARVARD 

to  him  that  that  way  lies  a  better  ordered  and 
more  wholesome  college  life. 

That  our  universities  have  responded  to  the 
modern  scientific  impulse  is  wholly  admirable. 
But  in  doing  so  was  it  necessary  to  renounce  the 
function  of  mental  training,  of  character-building, 
and  of  humanistic  culture,  which  is  not  only 
native  to  them,  but  vital  in  the  scheme  they  are 
ostensibly  emulating?  By  their  most  recent 
deeds  they  are  confessing  that  it  was  not. 

To-day  there  is  a  reaction  against  the  elective 
system,  which  is  strongest  at  Princeton  and  is 
felt  even  at  Harvard.  Yale  has  given  a  curious 
example  of  conservatism,  first  by  yielding  to  the 
elective  system  only  after  a  long,  slow  struggle, 
and  then  by  capitulating  to  it,  in  its  extreme 
form,  only  four  years  ago,  when  the  reaction 
elsewhere  was  in  full  swing;  so  that  it  is  still 
in  the  rear -guard  of  the  intellectual  advance. 
With  this  general  reaction  has  come  the  tendency 
to  revert  toward  the  English  university  methods 
—  or  rather  to  compass  them  a  second  time  in 
the  full  swing  of  the  cycle  of  progress.  Tutorial 
instruction  and  the  grouping  of  electives  have, 
under  various  guises,  taken  foothold  in  many  uni- 

84 


A   GERMANIZED    UNIVERSITY 

versities  beside  Princeton.  When  Cornell  lately 
insisted  on  grouping  electives,  Harvard  lost  its 
last  loyal  ally — unless  indeed  one  may  apply  that 
endearing  epithet  to  Yale.  The  dean  of  the  uni- 
versity was  the  only  one  seriously  to  oppose  the 
change,  which  he  regarded  as  a  surrender  to  con- 
servatism. He  and  President  Eliot  now  stand 
virtually  alone.  "The  older  I  grow/'  he  said, 
"  the  more  I  see  that  the  real  radicals  are  the  old 
men.  The  conservatives  are  young  men."  The 
amusing  truth  is  that  the  ancient  champions  of 
the  elective  system  are  frozen  in  the  radicalism 
of  their  youth,  which  has  thus  become  the  most 
rigid  conservatism.  Even  at  Harvard  a  radical 
element  in  the  Faculty  has  lately  secured  regula- 
tions encouraging  serious  students  to  group  gen- 
eral subjects.  This  is  something ;  but  in  order  to 
be  thoroughly  effective  or  in  any  way  adequate 
the  entire  system  would  have  to  be  revolutionized 
as  it  never  can  be  under  the  present  president. 

At  Oxford  the  scope  of  election  is  narrow. 
One  may  choose  among  Literce  Humaniores, 
Modern  History,  Mathematics,  Science,  and  Eng- 
lish ;  and  once  having  chosen,  the  studies  are  in 
effect  prescribed  by  virtue  of  the  uniform  univer- 

85 


HARVARD 

sity  examination.  Such  narrowness  of  scope  is 
generally  conceded,  even  in  England,  to  be  mis- 
taken. In  America  far  greater  latitude  will  have 
to  be  granted,  with  perhaps  considerable  inter- 
play among  the  cognate  honor  schools.  The  prob- 
lem is  far  from  simple.  But  if  an  American  educa- 
tion is  to  be  a  real  education,  not  a  loosely  stitched 
garment  of  shreds  and  patches,  some  order  will 
have  to  be  evoked  from  the  chaos  of  the  elective 
system. 

Not  the  least  advantage  of  such  a  grouping 
of  subjects  is  that  it  will  tend  to  remove  the 
emphasis  from  mere  science  and  place  it  on  the 
broader  and  more  general  culture.  There  has 
seldom  been  a  country  or  a  time  when  there  was 
greater  need  of  this  than  in  the  America  of  to- 
day. A  professor  of  Romance  Literature  in  one 
of  our  foremost  universities  has  a  very  sad  story 
to  tell  to  illustrate  the  declining  vogue  of  those 
studies  which  used  to  be  called  the  humanities. 
In  his  introductory  course  in  the  literature  of 
the  Italian  Renaissance  he  had  had  two  young 
women,  intelligent,  charming  —  to  teach  whom 
was  a  delight.  He  had  confidently  looked  to 
them  the  following  year  to  take  the  advanced 

86 


A   GERMANIZED    UNIVERSITY 

course,  but  at  the  time  of  registration  they  did 
not  appear.  Besought  for  an  explanation,  they 
said  that  his  lecture  hours  conflicted  with  those 
of  another  course  they  had  elected  —  in  abnor- 
mal psychology.  Charming  young  women;  ab- 
normal psychology ;  no  wonder  the  professor  of 
renaissance  culture  shook  his  head  at  the  future 
of  the  nation.  At  Harvard,  out  of  a  total  of 
2334  students  in  the  college,  less  than  300,  or 
about  one  in  eight,  are  pursuing  either  Greek 
or  Latin,  and  many  of  these  elect  only  a  single 
course  or  two.  The  number  of  those  who  achieve 
any  considerable  degree  of  classical  culture  is 
much  smaller. 

The  scientific  spirit,  in  its  most  altruistic  de- 
velopment, as  embodied  in  the  special  researcher, 
has  of  necessity  withdrawn  itself  very  far  from 
the  actual  and  present  needs  of  the  nation, 
political,  commercial,  and  social.  At  its  most 
practical,  in  the  technical  schools,  its  aim  has 
been  frankly  utilitarian.  The  great  need  of  mod- 
ern America  is  an  impulse  away  from  material- 
ism and  toward  higher  standards  of  living,  moral, 
intellectual,  and  spiritual.  Many  leading  institu- 
tions, notably  Princeton,  as  we  have  seen,  are 

87 


HARVARD 

already  keenly  sensible  of  the  need.  And  it  is  a 
hopeful  sign  of  the  times  that  no  one  has  been 
more  vigorous  in  sounding  the  advance  than  the 
president  of  our  foremost  technical  university, 
Cornell.  Already  we  have  made  mighty  progress 
in  the  purification  of  personal  life,  of  business, 
and  of  statecraft.  For  the  purpose  of  further- 
ing the  movement  and  conserving  it,  no  better 
engine  could  be  devised  than  a  system  of  uni- 
versities in  which  the  chosen  youth  of  the  nation 
shall  be  brought  in  contact  with  the  best  stand- 
ards of  the  human  spirit,  —  in  their  comrade- 
ships and  their  games  no  less  than  in  things  of  the 
mind. 

Whether  the  ancient  classics  will  ever  regain 
their  predominance  in  liberal  education  may  be 
doubted ;  but  when  they  are  taught  in  well- 
organized  groups  as  literature  and  not  merely  as 
scattered  exercises  in  philology  they  cannot  fail 
mightily  to  increase  their  appeal.  The  important 
fact  is  that  the  human  spirit  is  asserting  itself 
as  of  at  least  equal  importance  with  the  passion 
for  pure  science.  The  man  of  broad  culture 
will  take  his  place  beside  the  narrow  researcher. 
Character  and  style,  in  living  and  thinking  and 

88 


A  GERMANIZED  UNIVERSITY 

writing,  will  be  no  less  regarded  than  the  con- 
quest of  new  truth. 

For  the  universities  as  institutions  the  depar- 
ture should  prove  epoch-making.  Hitherto  there 
have  been  two  broadly  differentiated  types  in 
America,  the  small  college  and  the  large,  or, 
more  accurately  speaking,  the  college  and  the 
university.  Princeton  has  been  the  most  perfect 
example  of  the  one,  Harvard  of  the  other.  Both 
are  now  seen  to  be  tending  toward  the  same 
goal,  the  union  of  the  spirit  of  pure  science  with 
that  of  the  ripest  humanities.  There  is  still  a 
long  way  to  go.  Princeton  is  as  imperfect  in 
scientific  teaching  as  Harvard  is  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  study.  Nor  are  the  two  elements  any- 
where successfully  mingled.  But  it  is  not  too 
much  to  hope  that  eventually  we  shall  reproduce, 
in  a  form  assimilated  to  our  national  needs,  all 
that  is  valuable  in  the  two  great  types  of  modern 
university,  the  English  and  the  German. 

Whatever  may  be  the  misgivings  of  the  new 
radicals  with  regard  to  President  Eliot,  it  is 
nowhere  disputed  that  he  has  made  Harvard, 
and  to  a  great  extent  our  education  as  a  whole, 
what  it  is  to-day.  The  late  nineteenth  century 

89 


HARVARD 

in  America  witnessed  perhaps  the  greatest  and 
most  rapid  educational  expansion  the  world  has 
ever  known ;  and  he  was  its  master  spirit.  If  the 
future  proves  what  it  promises,  the  American 
university  will  be  the  most  perfect  institution  of 
the  kind  in  the  history  of  the  world. 

And  it  is  already  evident  that  no  one  can 
ever  have  a  more  powerful  hand  in  shaping  its 
destiny  than  the  bland,  grave  young  man  who 
remarked  to  Holmes  and  his  venerable  associates 
that  Harvard  had  a  new  president. 


Ill 

MICHIGAN: 
A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 


University  of  Michigan  was  the  first,  and 
-*-  is  perhaps  still  the  foremost,  of  the  state 
universities  characteristic  of  the  West  ;  but  the 
impression  it  gives,  and  especially  when  ap- 
proached from  the  interior,  is  that  of  an  eastern 
institution.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  Back 
Bay  and  Fifth  Avenue,  western  New  York  is  on 
the  frontier  ;  but  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
Golden  Gate,  Chicago  lies  next  the  eastern  sea- 
board. Our  nomenclature  needs  revising.  The 
great  university  of  the  Old  Northwest  really  lies 
in  the  new  Middle-East. 

When  President  Hadley  of  Yale  lately  ad- 
dressed his  western  alumni  at  Cincinnati,  exhort- 
ing them  to  be  more  diligent  in  recruiting  fresh- 
men, he  characterized  the  state  universities  as 
local  and  provincial,  in  contrast  with  the  endowed 
universities  of  the  East,  which,  he  said,  were 
more  nationally  representative. 

91 


MICHIGAN 

Professor  James  R.  Angell  of  the  University 
of  Chicago  brought  him  to  book.  Few  of  the 
state  universities,  he  said,  are  merely  local,  and 
he  showed  that  his  own  alma  mater,  Michigan, 
was  very  largely  national.  It  draws  its  students 
from  the  same  number  of  states  and  territories 
as  Yale,  namely  forty-eight,  and  from  one  more 
outlying  dependency  and  one  more  foreign 
country.  Though  Michigan  draws  more  students 
from  the  home  state,  the  disparity  is  scarcely 
greater  than  the  disparity  in  size  between  Michi- 
gan and  Connecticut.  Area  for  area,  the  figures 
are  about  the  same. 

Though  Yale  draws  more  students  from  New 
York,  Michigan  has  a  compensating  advantage 
in  her  own  neighboring  commonwealths  of  Ohio 
and  Illinois.  The  comparison  was  invalidated,  if 
at  all,  only  by  a  single  fact :  Michigan  has  4571 
students,  or  about  a  thousand  more  than  Yale  — 
being  one  of  the  three  or  four  universities  that 
are  closely  pressing  Harvard  for  first  place ;  so 
that  in  proportion  to  the  whole  number  of  stu- 
dents it  is,  perhaps,  a  trifle  less  representative. 
So  much  for  the  charge  of  provinciality. 

A  decade  before  Michigan  had  been  attacked 
92 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

in  the  state  legislature  as  a  class  institution, 
the  resort  of  the  sons  of  the  rich.  A  matter  of 
funds  was  at  stake,  and  Professor  Angell's  father, 
president  of  the  university  during  more  than 
half  of  its  existence,  showed  that  forty-five  per 
cent  of  the  students  were  sons  of  men  who  lived 
by  manual  labor,  —  farmers,  mechanics,  and  the 
like,  —  many  of  the  rest  coming  from  the  families 
of  clerks  and  shop-keepers. 

Almost  as  broadly  representative  as  the  East- 
ern universities  on  the  score  of  territory,  Michi- 
gan is  more  broadly  representative  on  the  score 
of  democracy.  And  this  distinction  is  not  less- 
ened by  the  fact  that  the  children  of  the  well-to- 
do  are  resorting  to  it  in  increasing  numbers.  The 
University  of  Michigan  has  at  once  the  popular 
character  of  a  Western  state  university  and  the 
national  character  of  the  endowed  institutions  of 
the  East. 

A  similar  blending  of  apparently  opposite 
qualities  runs  through  the  whole  life  of  the  insti- 
tution, social  and  educational,  though  not  always 
to  its  advantage.  Emulating  the  German  univer- 
sities, it  early  renounced  direct  responsibility  for 
the  manners  and  morals  of  the  students.  Yet, 

93 


MICHIGAN 

like  Harvard,  which  went  to  even  greater  ex- 
tremes, it  has  been  held  accountable  in  this 
respect  by  the  community  from  which  it  draws 
its  funds ;  while  the  undergraduates  are  project- 
ing, and  may  bring  about,  a  social  life  closely 
resembling  that  of  Yale,  Harvard,  and  Princeton. 
On  the  educational  side,  as  will  appear  later,  it 
has  striven  from  the  very  outset  toward  the  Ger- 
man ideal  of  pure  science  —  as  opposed  to  the 
state  university  instinct  for  technical  training  on 
the  one  hand  and  the  elder  American  ideal  of 
liberal  culture  on  the  other ;  but  in  practice  it 
has  been  obliged  to  give  most  of  its  instruction 
in  technology  and  in  the  liberal  arts  and  profes- 
sions. 

In  two  ways  it  is  marvelous :  that,  being  a 
state  institution,  it  has  become  so  broadly  repre- 
sentative and  so  liberal;  and  that,  having  devel- 
oped so  far,  it  has  not  developed  further.  It  is 
among  the  most  chaotic  of  our  universities,  as  it 
is  among  those  that  give  greatest  promise  for 
the  future. 

The  disorder  is  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
university  has  no  dominant  progressive  policy. 
President  Angell  has  guided  its  destinies  with 

94 


A   MIDDLE-EASTERN   UNIVERSITY 

consummate  wisdom  and  tact  through  the  period 
of  gigantic  development  and  expansion  that  has 
placed  it  where  it  is,  and  his  faculties  are  said  to 
be  as  keen  as  ever ;  but  the  propulsive  power  of 
leadership  is  waning.  The  machine,  such  as  it  is, 
is  well  oiled  and  humming,  but  it  is  inadequate 
to  the  gigantic  work  in  hand.  In  almost  every 
department  of  university  life  there  are  two  fac- 
tions, —  a  group  of  older  men  in  control,  and  a 
body  of  younger  men,  filled  with  creative  energy, 
who  feel  themselves  hampered. 

The  academic  shades  of  Ann  Arbor  are  still 
reverberating  with  the  noise  of  factional  strife. 
A  group  of  the  older  and  more  influential  mem- 
bers of  the  Faculty  conceived  the  idea  of  a 
memorial  hall  to  commemorate  those  who  died 
in  the  Civil  War,  together  with  those  who  have 
honored  the  alma  mater  in  the  arts  of  peace. 
It  was  a  noble  idea,  but  as  it  was  of  no  great 
utility,  it  did  not  pull  strongly  upon  alumni  purse- 
strings.  A  rumor  came  vaguely  to  their  ears  of 
a  movement  on  the  part  of  the  undergraduates 
to  establish  a  Union  which  should  develop  in  a 
common  centre  the  scattered  social  life  of  the 
institution.  In  the  circulars  they  sent  out  to  the 

95 


MICHIGAN 

graduates,  appealing  for  funds,  the  impression 
was  conveyed  that  the  Michigan  Memorial  Hall 
was  to  include  the  Michigan  Union. 

The  response  was  immediate  and  generous. 
Then  the  plans  for  the  building  were  divulged. 
The  chief  room  was  an  assembly  hall,  seating 
eight  hundred  —  a  solemn,  rectangular  apartment 
for  solemn,  rectangular  occasions.  There  were  to 
be  four  galleries  for  pictures  of  the  dead,  and 
one  for  mortuary  sculptures.  On  the  walls  of  the 
halls  were  to  be  placed  tablets  to  the  departed. 
And  the  Michigan  Union  ?  There  was  to  be  one 
rectangular  room  for  alumni,  and  one  reading- 
room.  There  was  no  kitchen,  no  dining-room, 
no  easy  rooms  for  foregathering  undergraduates, 
no  bedrooms  for  returning  graduates.  The  pro- 
mised social  centre  was  a  series  of  whispering 
galleries  for  the  dead.  The  protests  of  the  living 
were  loud.  A  party  of  old  men,  the  younger  fac- 
tion said,  had  hoodwinked  them  into  subscribing 
a  monument  to  their  fame.  They  burlesqued  the 
Memorial  Union,  caricatured  it,  lampooned  it. 
When  the  subscriptions  were  called  for,  many 
neglected  to  send  the  promised  money.  To-day 
the  sounds  of  strife  are  subsiding.  Even  the 

96 


A   MIDDLE-EASTERN    UNIVERSITY 

undergraduates  admit  that,  like  Reynard  the  fox, 
of  old,  the  Memorial  Committee  "  had  no  wykked 
intent."  Peace  has  been  declared,  in  the  name  of 
seemliness.  The  Memorial  Hall  will  be  built  in 
time,  and  so  will  the  Union. 

At  the  outset  the  university  had  dormitories 
and  commons  —  the  system  of  collegiate  resi- 
dence which  we  have  inherited  from  our  English 
ancestors  and  which  has  proved  everywhere  har- 
monious with  our  racial  instincts.  In  the  sixth 
decade  of  the  past  century  President  Tappan 
abolished  them.  He  was  an  able  educator,  of 
lofty  and  devoted  ideals,  well  deserving  of  a 
statue  in  the  Memorial  Gallery.  But  his  ideals 
were  derived  from  the  German  universities,  and 
he  had  not  the  practical  sense  to  see  that  they 
could  not  be  adopted  en  bloc,  but  must  be  adapted 
to  the  genius  of  our  people.  In  the  words  of  the 
historian  of  the  university,  "  he  believed  that, 
whatever  the  convenience  and  charm  of  dormi- 
tory life  might  be,  they  were  more  than  balanced 
by  even  so  much  of  home  life  as  a  student  could 
find  in  a  lodging  or  boarding  house,  while  the 
abolition  of  the  system  would  at  once  set  free 
space  in  the  college  buildings  that  was  much 

97 


MICHIGAN 

needed  for  other  purposes,  and  relieve  the  trea- 
sury of  a  large  expenditure  of  money,  and  the 
Faculty  of  a  great  deal  of  care  and  annoyance 
in  the  way  of  supervision."  The  italics  are  mine. 

In  other  words,  to  gain  a  few  laboratories  and 
lecture  rooms  he  shirked  upon  townspeople  the 
responsibility  for  the  manners  and  morals  of 
the  undergraduates.  The  result  is  modern  Ann 
Arbor  —  a  place  without  the  amenity  of  well- 
ordered  college  life,  without  pervasive  college 
spirit  and  traditions. 

The  suggestion  of  family  life  is  a  joke.  At 
Michigan  and  many  another  state  university 
lodging-house  keepers  live  in  nooks  and  crannies 
in  a  kitchen  extension,  crowding  undergraduates 
into  every  available  room  in  front.  Obeying  the 
sordid  and  selfish  instincts  of  their  kind,  they 
prefer  men  students,  who  are  less  trouble  to  serve ; 
and,  when  they  are  able,  they  fill  their  rooms 
with  them.  Thus  the  young  women  are  delayed 
in  securing  lodgings  and  prevented  from  getting 
the  more  desirable  rooms.  At  Michigan  and  at 
other  state  universities,  as  for  example  Wisconsin, 
there  is  a  strong  movement  toward  reform  in  this 
particular;  but  at  the  time  of  my  investigations 

98 


A   MIDDLE-EASTERN   UNIVERSITY 

it  was  by  no  means  rare  for  one  or  two  young 
women  to  live  in  a  house  with  many  men,  shar- 
ing with  them  a  single  bathroom. 

At  Michigan,  as  at  many  another  university 
and  college  without  dormitories,  the  first  protest 
against  this  order,  if  order  it  can  be  called,  was 
the  fraternity  and  the  sorority.  Here  we  come 
upon  the  great  moot  question  of  American  un- 
dergraduate life. 

At  Princeton  fraternities  were  long  ago  abol- 
ished as  harmful  to  undergraduate  democracy. 
At  Harvard  they  are  an  insignificant  survival. 
At  Yale,  where  fraternities  are  still  strong,  they 
are  limited  to  the  sophomore  and  junior  years, 
and  are  subordinate  and  tributary  to  the  senior 
fifteens,  Bones,  Keys,  and  the  rest,  which,  though 
secret,  are  purely  local,  having  no  fraternal  ties 
with  chapters  elsewhere.  The  ideal  of  the  social 
system  of  the  older  universities  is  a  gradual  pro- 
cess of  democratic  selection  on  the  basis  of  the 
character  a  man  develops  in  the  general  life,  and 
his  services  to  the  student  body  as  a  whole. 
Where  the  fraternity  system  has  reached  its 
strongest  development,  on  the  other  hand,  mem- 
bers are  chosen  at  the  outset  of  the  freshman 

99 


MICHIGAN 

year,  or  earlier.  They  are  pledged  a  year,  some- 
times two  years,  before  they  arrive ;  and  it  is 
the  exception  when  a  man  is  admitted  after  his. 
first  semester. 

I  have  mentioned  it  to  the  discredit  of  the 
Harvard  clubs  and  societies  that,  though  emi- 
nently pleasant  to  the  men  who  belong  to  them, 
they  are  not  made  up  on  any  true  basis  of  leader- 
ship, and  tend  to  withdraw  a  man  from  the  gen- 
eral life  rather  than  strengthen  his  power  in  it 
for  good.  The  evil  influence  of  the  fraternity 
system  is  of  a  more  pernicious  kind,  and  much 
more  pronounced. 

One  of  the  incidents  of  "  rushing  "  freshmen 
and  sub-freshmen  is  that  it  lays  stress  on  a 
man's  family  and  social  position  —  which  is  cer- 
tainly an  eye-opener,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
fraternity  system  is  strongest  in  the  most  recent, 
and  ostensibly  the  most  democratic,  of  our  uni- 
versities. Harvard's  reputation  for  snobbishness, 
as  I  have  pointed  out,  is  greatly  exaggerated. 
Before  the  Bones  elections  at  Yale,  as  a  member 
of  the  society  assured  me,  the  electors  are 
instructed  by  leading  graduates  to  ignore  all 
question  of  a  man's  family  and  its  previous 

100 


A   MIDDLE-EASTERN    UNIVERSITY 

connection  with  the  society.  The  means  which 
Princeton  takes  to  guard  against  nepotism  has 
already  been  indicated.  Many  fraternities,  on  the 
other  hand,  pride  themselves  on  the  fact  that 
they  are  able  to  choose  most  of  their  members 
from  brothers  and  sons  of  older  members.  One 
chapter  frankly  cited  this  as  evidence  of  its  dis- 
tinction. 

At  Michigan  the  so-called  Palladium,  consist- 
ing of  eight  leading  fraternities,  long  dominated 
the  social  life  of  the  university ;  and  though  the 
Palladium  has  disappeared,  the  spirit  that  ani- 
mated it  remains.  The  fraternities  number  about 
one  third  of  the  student  body ;  but  in  scholarship 
they  are  below  the  average,  for  the  pleasantness 
of  fraternity  life  is  a  constant  temptation  to 
idleness.  If  they  excel  in  other  student  interests, 
it  is  largely  by  accident.  Leading  orators  and 
debaters  are  frequently  not  fraternity  men.  Last 
year  at  Michigan  all  three  of  the  leading  'varsity 
captains  were  non-fraternity  men,  and  the  fact, 
as  far  as  I  could  find  out,  was  so  far  from  para- 
doxical that  my  surprise  at  it  was  most  surprising 
to  my  informers. 

The  fraternity  is  a  family,  I  was  told,  its 
101 


MICHIGAN 

members  brothers  wbo  live  in  the  most  intimate 
affection  and  loyalty.  In  order  that  its  influ- 
ence shall  be  exerted  to  the  best  effect,  it  is 
regarded  as  essential  that  one  shall  be  a  member 
throughout  all  four  years.  Even  though  a  man 
is  an  orator  or  an  athlete,  why  should  he  be 
elected  if  his  table  manners  are  bad  or  his 
character  in  any  way  unpleasant?  I  pointed  out 
that  many  non-fraternity  upperclassmen  who  have 
achieved  prominence  are  men  of  the  best  char- 
acter, and  their  manners  often  good,  or  easily 
capable  of  betterment.  A  few  such  men,  I  was 
told,  were  elected ;  and  in  other  cases  they  had 
refused  election  because  their  pride  had  been 
wounded  at  not  being  elected  earlier,  or  because 
they  were  opposed  on  principle  to  the  fraternity 
system. 

The  simple  fact  is  that  the  fraternities  have 
never  regarded  themselves  as  leaders  in  college 
spirit  or  in  college  activities.  More  than  once, 
and  especially  in  smaller  institutions,  I  have  been 
told  in  so  many  words  that  the  fraternity  is  more 
important  than  the  college.  There  is  nothing  else 
in  undergraduate  life  half  as  pleasant  or  half  as 
inspiring;  and  in  the  world  it  is  of  far  more 

102 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

value  to  be,  say,  an  Alpha  Delt  than  a  graduate 
of  this  .college  or  that.  All  this  is  in  striking 
contrast  with  the  spirit  of  Princeton  or  of  Yale. 
There  the  ideal  is  to  select  the  men  who  have 
done  most  for  the  alma  mater ;  to  subject  them 
to  its  best  influences  and  traditions  in  order  to 
make  them  in  all  ways  worthy  of  it ;  and,  finally, 
to  send  them  out  into  the  world  so  equipped 
as  to  be  of  the  utmost  service  to  the  world 
and  credit  to  their  alma  mater.  In  a  fraternity 
college  such  an  ideal  is  undreamed  of. 

In  the  nature  of  things,  a  stranger  tends  to 
exaggerate  the  fraternity  evil.  Fraternity  life  has 
certainly  rare  and  signal  virtues.  A  maximum  of 
comfort  is  attained  at  a  minimum  expense.  Of 
the  extravagant  luxury  so  often  charged  against 
it  I  found  really  nothing,  and  I  have  lived  and 
dined  in  leading  houses,  not  only  at  Michigan, 
but  at  Wisconsin,  Chicago,  and  Cornell,  not  to 
mention  less  prominent  institutions.  The  fare  is 
wholesome  and  probably  simpler  than  a  major- 
ity of  the  members  are  accustomed  to  at  home. 
Dinner  usually  consists  of  meat  with  vegetables 
and  a  very  simple  dessert;  breakfast  of  cereal 
and  milk,  coffee  and  toast.  Soup  at  dinner  is 

103 


MICHIGAN 

infrequent;  at  breakfast  I  only  once  found  eggs, 
fish,  or  meat.  The  house  is  a  rare  exception  in 
which  drinking  of  all  kinds  and  degrees  is  not 
forbidden — by  common  consent  of  the  members, 
not  by  decree  of  the  Faculty. 

Even  outside  the  houses  the  fraternities  exert 
a  strong,  good  influence.  If  a  fellow  is  given 
to  excessive  conviviality,  the  senior  in  residence 
takes  him  in  charge.  At  Michigan  one  Saturday 
evening  I  was  sitting  with  a  group  of  my  fra- 
ternity hosts  in  one  of  the  most  popular  beer 
saloons.  An  underclassman  drew  aside  one  of 
our  number,  the  senior  resident  of  the  chapter, 
and,  after  a  whispered  conference,  departed  with 
a  smiling  countenance.  The  boy  had  lost  control 
of  himself,  the  senior  told  me,  and  he  had  put 
him  on  his  honor.  That  evening  there  was  to  be 
a  special  occasion,  and  he  had  dropped  the  lad 
off  the  water  wagon  for  the  time  on  a  promise  of 
moderation. 

Though  leadership  is  scarcely  a  basis  of  elec- 
tion to  the  fraternities,  many  chapters  give  their 
members  all  encouragement  to  distinguish  them- 
selves—  except  that  of  making  election  in  the 
first  place  a  quid  pro  quo.  Even  in  the  matter  of 

104 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

scholarship  the  senior  members  exert  a  wisely 
restraining  influence.  Few  of  the  men  fail  ut- 
terly. If  the  spirit  of  manly  jollity  and  help- 
ful comradeship  has  ever  been  more  successfully 
cultivated  than  in  fraternity  life  at  its  best,  I  do 
not  know  where. 

Throughout  life  the  bond  of  the  fraternal 
spirit  is  almost  incredibly  strong.  The  dramatic 
critic  of  a  New  York  paper,  a  Michigan  man, 
told  me  of  hearing  from  a  reporter  that  a  woman 
in  the  notorious  Haymarket  was  wearing  the  pin 
of  his  fraternity.  Deeply  scandalized,  he  sallied 
forth  at  once,  and  found  that  it  had  been  stolen 
by  a  hotel  chambermaid  from  a  graduate  of  a 
New  York  college.  He  bought  it  and  restored  it 
to  its  bereaved  owner.  In  his  youth  Clyde  Fitch, 
having  been  involved  against  his  will  in  a  small 
riot  at  the  door  of  a  theatre,  was  arrested  and 
lodged  in  jail  by  an  officious  policeman.  A  re- 
porter caught  sight  of  the  pin  of  his  fraternity 
at  Amherst,  and  organized  a  relief  expedition. 
When  Mr.  Fitch  was  released,  he  was  asked  if  he 
had  not  suffered  in  his  dirty  and  noisome  cell. 
"  Not  at  all,"  he  said.  "  I  spent  the  time  reciting 
Browning."  It  must  be  granted,  however,  that 

105 


MICHIGAN 

his  fraternity  proved  the  more  efficient  Samar- 
itan. A  man  who  was  appointed  to  a  professor- 
ship at  Michigan  from  a  post  in  the  army  made  it 
known  that  he  would  like  to  join  Sigma  Phi.  He 
was  initiated  with  all  due  torture,  and  submitted 
to  the  ordeal  unflinchingly,  never  ceasing  to  show 
all  respect  to  older  members,  whether  sopho- 
mores or  freshmen.  But,  as  one  of  these  assured 
me,  that  did  not  prevent  him  from  flunking  his 
new  brothers  whenever  they  deserved  it.  In  all 
large  American  cities  leading  fraternities  have 
club  houses,  which  rival  the  Yale  clubs  and  the 
Harvard  clubs  in  loyalty,  if  not  in  size.  No  event, 
from  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  fails  to  enlist  the 
sympathy  of  the  mystic  brotherhood. 

At  Michigan  there  are  now  thirty-two  fraterni- 
ties and  eleven  sororities.  Almost  every  year  sees 
the  addition  of  a  new  chapter.  The  need  of  a 
better  residential  life  is  shown  in  the  fact  that 
men  are  beginning  to  get  together  fraternally  on 
the  basis  of  the  sections  from  which  they  come : 
already  there  is  a  Rocky  Mountain  Club,  a  Key- 
stone Club,  and  a  New  York  Club,  each  with  its 
separate  house  and  dining-room  —  besides  half 
a  dozen  other  similar  organizations.  In  no  state 

106 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

university,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  are  there  as 
many  fraternities  as  at  Michigan ;  and  their 
handsome  and  commodious  houses  are  surpassed, 
if  anywhere,  only  at  Cornell. 

For  the  non-fraternity  students  there  is  no 
social  centre  —  no  place  where  they  feel  them- 
selves a  part  of  the  student  life.  Their  logical 
friends  are  the  chance  collection  who  live  under 
the  same  roof  or  board  at  the  same  table.  Some 
few  they  may  meet  in  lecture  rooms  or  on  the 
athletic  field.  As  in  Germany,  beer  drinking  is  a 
means  of  general  intercourse.  One  fraternity  man 
explained  his  frequent  presence  in  the  saloons  by 
saying  that  nowhere  else  was  he  able  to  enlarge 
his  acquaintance  beyond  the  narrow  fraternity 
world.  It  is  probably  due  to  the  lack  of  general 
undergraduate  life,  quite  as  much  as  to  German 
example,  that  beer  drinking  has  become  popular 
at  Ann  Arbor.  While  I  was  there  a  student  soci- 
ologer  found  that  there  were  thirty-nine  saloons, 
and  explained  their  popularity  on  the  ground 
that  they  afforded  "  all  the  comforts  of  home." 
One  graduate  of  the  Medical  School,  now  a  well- 
established  practitioner,  had  his  favorite  saloon- 
keeper put  his  mark  beneath  the  signature  of 

107 


MICHIGAN 

President  Angell,  explaining  that  his  hours  of 
conviviality  were  among  the  most  important 
of  his  educational  life.  But  both  fraternity  men 
and  non-fraternity  men  characteristically  live  the 
narrow  life  of  cliques,  gaining  little  from  the 
spirit  of  the  place  and  contributing  as  little  to  it. 
Yet,  in  spite  of  boarding-houses  and  frater- 
nities, there  is  at  Ann  Arbor  a  vigorous  and  most 
vital  tendency  toward  a  general  social  life.  Inter- 
class  rivalry,  so  strong  in  the  days  when  Amer- 
ican universities  were  colleges,  survives,  here  as 
elsewhere,  in  freshman  and  sophomore  dinners. 
Until  lately  these  were  the  occasion  of  exuberant 
rough-house.  The  diners  were  captured,  their 
hair  clipped,  their  faces  streaked  with  war-paint 
-and  the  result  handed  down  to  posterity  in 
group  photographs.  Once  the  freshmen  escaped 
the  sophomores  by  crawling  to  the  dinner  room 
in  the  gymnasium  through  hot-air  ducts  leading 
from  the  central  heating  plant.  Not  infrequently 
the  disorder  exceeded  all  bounds.  Inoffensive  cit- 
izens of  Ann  Arbor  were  caught  and,  by  means 
of  the  ready  shears,  deprived  of  their  hirsute 
adornments.  The  annual  rough-house  now  takes 
the  form  of  a  pushball  contest  between  the  com- 

108 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

bined  forces  of  the  two  classes,  and  a  "  big-side  " 
tug-of-war.  This  ended  last  year  by  dragging  the 
contestants  into  the  Huron  River,  which  is  said 
to  be  very  wet. 

The  origin  of  such  demonstrations  —  to  the 
superficial  and  the  unsympathetic  view  mere  ex- 
cesses of  barbarity  —  is  in  reality  an  admirably 
exuberant  social  sense,  a  wholesome  esprit  de 
corps.  Under  the  present  system  this  is  sporadic 
and  ineffective;  but  it  needs  only  a  fitter  means 
of  expression  to  develop  into  valuable  college 
spirit  and  traditions. 

Of  late  years  progress  has  been  rapid.  There 
has  been  a  large  and  altogether  wholesome 
increase  in  the  number  of  student  associations 
drawing  their  members  from  the  undergraduate 
body  at  large.  Only  a  few  of  these  need  be  men- 
tioned. Churches  of  every  denomination  in  Ann 
Arbor  gather  students  together  on  a  social  basis. 
The  Phi  Beta  Kappa  is  about  to  establish  a  chap- 
ter. There  is  a  Cercle  Frangais  and  a  Deutscher 
Verein,  which  give,  respectively,  a  French  and  a 
German  play  annually.  A  Comedy  Club  gives  a 
play  in  English  at  the  time  of  the  Junior  Hop. 
There  are  junior  and  senior  social  clubs  —  The 

109 


MICHIGAN 

Pipe  and  Bowl  and  The  Friars.  A  recently  organ- 
ized club,  the  Michigamua,  aims  to  draw  its  mem- 
bers, quite  in  the  manner  of  the  Yale  senior 
societies,  from  among  the  leaders  in  all  prominent 
undergraduate  activities,  studious,  social,  and  ath- 
letic. In  a  word,  the  University  of  Michigan  is  de- 
r  veloping  club  life  on  precisely  the  lines  laid  down 
by  the  great  endowed  universities  of  the  East. 
Much  the  same  can  be  said,  no  doubt,  of  all  state 
universities,  but  I  know  of  none  where  the  de- 
velopment is  anywhere  near  as  rich  and  varied. 

Both  the  leading  senior  societies,  The  Friars 
and  Michigamua,  are  highly  picturesque.  The 
Friars  convene  on  Saturday  nights,  at  about  ten 
o'clock.  At  the  head  of  a  huge  table,  carved  full 
of  initials  and  names  of  former  members,  sits  the 
Pope,  who  commands  order  by  rapping  on  the 
table  with  a  spigot,  and  calls  on  the  members  in 
turn  for  a  song  or  a  story.  The  Friars  have  their 
own  song,  written  by  a  member  —  "In  College 
Days."  It  is  an  uncommonly  fine  song,  and  is 
sung  uncommonly  well.  Several  of  the  more 
popular  of  the  young  instructors  are  members, 
and  occasionally  attend  meetings.  But  it  is  very 
important  that  they  should  be  able  to  tell  the 

110 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

precise  psychological  moment  for  saying  good- 
night. Otherwise  they  are  likely  to  become  in- 
voluntary recruits  in  a  shirt-tail  parade.  This 
function  must  be  clearly  distinguished  from  the 
night-shirt  parade  known  at  the  University  of 
Wisconsin.  A  number  of  young  instructors  were 
lately  led  into  the  midnight  streets  of  Ann  Arbor, 
in  their  ordinary  clothes,  to  be  sure,  but  flying 
a  flag  fore  and  aft. 

The  members  of  Michigamua  are  all  braves— 
wampum  and  feathers  are  their  regalia.  Indian 
names  they  have  also.  Let  Broken-heart  Smith 
marry  ever  so  happily,  his  wife,,  when  she  sees 
his  Michigamua  photograph,  will,  like  Dante, 
know  the  traces  of  an  ancient  flame.  The  Michi- 
gamuans  have  gone  the  tapping  of  Yale  senior 
societies  one  better.  When  they  have  elected  new 
members,  they  don  their  war-paint,  and  with 
swinging  lariat  issue  forth,  lasso  the  elect,  and 
drag  them  to  the  lodge.  Unlike  the  Yale  senior 
societies,  Michigamua  is,  and  will  perhaps  always 
remain,  subordinate  to  the  fraternities ;  yet  it  is 
said  to  be  a  strong  factor  for  good. 

Though   The   Friars   and   Michigamua  have 
clubrooms,  they  are  not,  in  the  full  sense  of  the 

111 


MICHIGAN 

word,  clubs.  Except  at  the  times  of  the  periodical 
meetings,  the  rooms  are  pretty  sure  to  be  deserted. 
To  get  in,  one  has  to  use  a  private  key  or  a  lock 
combination.  Neither  has  club  servants  or  a 
kitchen.  Michigamua  sedately  bars  the  keg,  more- 
over. The  normal  club  has  a  well-frequented 
house,  and  is  moderately  convivial.  If  the  appeal 
of  the  saloon  at  Ann  Arbor  is  to  be  successfully 
combated,  some  place  is  needed  which  also  of- 
fers, in  the  phrase  sociological,  "  all  the  com- 
forts of  home." 

Such  a  place  it  is  the  purpose  of  the  Michigan 
Union  to  supply.  The  question  of  beer  is  likely 
to  prove  knotty.  At  a  club  in  another  state  uni- 
versity I  was  shown  an  ice  box  with  bottles  in  it, 
but  was  asked  not  to  mention  the  fact  for  fear 
of  steeling  the  hearts  of  the  legislature.  It  has 
been  conservatively  estimated  that  seventy  per 
cent  of  the  undergraduates  resort  to  the  saloons, 
though  for  the  most  part  at  infrequent  intervals. 
The  closing  hour  of  ten  o'clock  is  observed  by 
the  turning  off  of  lights  —  but  not  always  of 
beer. 

A  Union  frequented  by  the  Faculty  and  man- 
aged by  representative  young  graduates  and 

112 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

undergraduates  could  certainly  do  better ;  judg- 
ing by  the  rule  of  the  fraternities  with  regard 
to  drinking  in  the  house,  they  should  do  super- 
latively well.  Kitchen  and  grill  the  Union  will 
certainly  have,  with  bedrooms  to  entice  the  gradu- 
ate who  has  not  the  privilege  of  the  alumni  room 
in  a  fraternity  house,  and  who  shrinks  before  the 
well-known  terrors  of  the  local  hotel.  There  will 
be  billiards  and  bowling,  easy-chairs  for  comfort- 
able talk,  and  a  periodical  room  and  library  for 
comfortable  reading.  The  residence  of  the  late 
Judge  Cooley,  which  lies  across  the  street  from 
the  campus,  has  already  been  acquired,  and  the 
house,  a  substantial  and  rather  handsome  build- 
ing-of  stone,  is  to  be  the  first  home  of  united 
Michigan.  Eventually  a  vastly  larger  and  more 
adequate  building  is  to  be  erected. 

It  would  be  easy  to  exaggerate  the  good  in- 
fluence of  the  Union,  even  if  it  succeeded  in 
diverting  and  tempering  the  conviviality  of  the 
saloons.  The  poorer  students,  on  the  one  hand, 
have  neither  the  time  nor  the  money  necessary 
to  take  full  advantage  of  it;  and,  on  the  other, 
fraternity  men  would  be  always  inclined  to  prefer 
the  comfort  and  close  friendship  of  their  own 

113 


MICHIGAN 

houses.  For  precisely  such  reasons  as  these  the 
value  of  the  celebrated  Oxford  Union  is  far  less 
than  we  Americans  have  assumed,  and  the  Har- 
vard Union,  though  well  frequented,  has  not  suc- 
ceeded in  materially  remedying  the  lack  of  a 
united  college  sentiment.  But  Michigan  has  far 
greater  need  of  social  facilities  than  either,  and 
beyond  question  the  Union  will  prove  of  vast 
advantage  as  a  centre  of  college  traditions  and 
spirit. 

Already  the  university  has  developed  enough 

/university  spirit  to  give   it,  on  the  whole,  the 
broadest  and  most  successful  athletic    develop- 

V  ment  in  the  West. 

At  Michigan,  as  in  most  other  American  uni- 
versities, however,  the  crying  need  is  of  a  better- 
ordered  residential  life.  The  influences  that  make 
most  strongly  for  character  and  culture  are  not 
those  which  adorn  moments  of  social  leisure,  but 
those  which  operate  without  intermission  in  the 
normal  and  inevitable  occupations  —  eating  and 
sleeping,  work  and  play.  Thanks  to  her  system 
of  clubs  and  her  Union,  Michigan  has  a  less  pre- 
sent and  crying  need  of  the  residential  hall  than 
other  state  universities — for  example  Wisconsin, 

114 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

as  we  shall  see ;  but  at  best  the  difference  is  not 
great.  Sooner  or  later  the  "  home  influence  "  of 
the  boarding  and  lodging  houses  will  have  to  be 
moderated.  It  is  said  that  the  townspeople  would 
exert  a  powerful  political  influence  against  the 
system  of  quadrangular  halls.  But  under  strong 
leadership  the  university  should  have  nothing 
to  fear  from  influence  so  obviously  inspired  by 
narrow  self-interest. 

I  heard  nothing  of  that  sort  of  thing  at  Wis- 
consin. There  a  clear-headed  leader  is  armed  and 
resolute  to  strike  to  the  heart  of  the  one  great 
evil  of  American  university  life.  Michigan  is  at 
an  equal  advantage  with  Wisconsin  in  that  it  has 
no  system  of  dormitories  to  demolish  as  a  prepa- 
ration for  the  quadrangular  hall,  and  a  recent 
liberal  grant  of  money  from  the  legislature  has 
put  the  university  in  funds.  But  it  is  much  to  be 
feared  that  the  Ann  Arbor  undergraduate  will  still 
be  enduring  President  Tappan's  ideal  of  home 
influence  when  the  undergraduate  at  Madison  is 
well  housed  and  well  fed  in  communities  alive 
with  ripe  university  tradition. 

The  Michigan  co-ed  enjoys  the  liberties  which 
are  still  enjoyed,  and  on  the  whole  fortunately, 

115 


MICHIGAN 

by  the  generality  of  young  women  in  the  Middle 
West.  The  chaperon  is  an  idol  that  has  a  niche, 
but  few  worshipers.  Parties  of  several  couples 
rejoice  in  the  Arcadian  buggy  ride  and  the  dis- 
tant dinner.  The  single  wayfaring  couple  is  not 
unknown.  In  a  happy  newspaper  phrase,  the  light 
fantastic  toe  is  weekly  tripped  at  Granger's.  But 
not  all  liberties  are  cherished.  Michigan  scorns 
her  co-ed.  The  eight  leading  fraternities,  once 
known  as  the  Palladium  crowd,  have  frowned 
upon  her.  It  is  said  that  at  Madison  if  a  fra- 
ternity, no  matter  how  powerful,  fails  in  its  du- 
ties of  gallantry,  the  feminine  influence  against 
it  is  strong  enough  to  divert  the  best  freshmen 
to  its  more  gallant  rivals.  At  Ann  Arbor  a  fra- 
ternity is  on  the  down  grade  if  it  begins  to  take 
notice. 

In  the  old  days,  when  the  maiden  from  Detroit 
and  Jackson  first  appeared  in  numbers,  the  mag- 
nanimous woman  student  granted  that  it  was  only 
natural  for  the  fellows  to  invite  their  boyhood 
friends  from  home.  But  the  men  proved  un- 
worthy of  such  magnanimity.  They  began  to  have 
their  sisters  invite  whole  boarding-schools  of 
young  girls  they  had  never  seen.  Then  the  co-ed  as- 

116 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

serted  her  dignity  and  stayed  away,  even  though 
invited.  At  the  last  junior  hop  there  were  less 
than  a  half-dozen  women  students.  It  is  said  that 
the  president  seriously  considered  refusing  to 
sanction  it  by  his  presence,  on  the  ground  that 
it  was  not  a  representative  gathering. 

Enforced  or  voluntary,  the  young  women  have 
profited  by  this  social  segregation.  It  is  generally 
admitted  that  they  have  progressed  even  further 
than  the  men  in  the  matter  of  general  organiza- 
tion. Sororities  are  numerous,  and  one  of  them, 
a  non-secret  society  called  Sorosis,  has  a  house  of 
distinguished  comfort  and  beauty.  There  is  a 
spacious  women's  gymnasium,  with  a  large  bath- 
ing-tank in  the  locker-room.  Connected  with  it  is 
a  series  of  rooms  which  already  serve  most  of  the 
purposes  of  a  Union.  In  them  the  Women's 
League  holds  receptions,  dinners,  and  dances. 
At  present  there  is  no  kitchen,  so  that  things  to 
eat  and  drink  have  to  be  supplied  from  without, 
and  only  on  set  occasions,  but  it  is  hoped  that 
that  defect  will  be  remedied  in  time. 

Eecently  the  Women's  League  has  begun  to 
form  committees  to  welcome  incoming  freshmen 
and  aid  them  in  taking  up  undergraduate  life  in 

117 


MICHIGAN 

the  manner  best  suited  to  their  needs  and  cap- 
abilities. No  young  woman  need  now  arrive  at 
Ann  Arbor  quite  friendless  and  forlorn.  And  the 
Dean  of  Women  is  exerting  a  strong,  though 
quiet,  pressure  toward  reforming  the  boarding 
and  lodging  houses.  Before  many  years  she  hopes 
to  have  done  away  with  the  mingling  of  the  sexes 
beneath  the  same  roof,  and  to  induce  each  wo- 
men's house  to  have  its  own  parlor  and  adequate 
bathing  facilities.  There  are  many  who  will 
regard  such  developments  as  no  slight  compen- 
sation for  the  lost  joys  of  mixed  society. 

Educationally,  as  socially,  Michigan  has  been 
at  war  with  its  own  instincts.  From  the  begin- 
ning, early  in  the  nineteenth  century,  its  proudest 
ideal  has  been  to  reproduce  the  German  type 
of  state  university.  One  of  the  curiosities  of 
American  history  is  the  scheme  for  a  so-called 
Katholoepistemiad,  describing  a  typical  Prussian 
institution  in  the  quaintly  pseudo-classic  no- 
menclature which  Jefferson  narrowly  failed  to 
saddle  upon  the  Old  Northwest  entire,  and  which 
still  remains  in  such  names  as  Kome,  Ithaca, 
Athens,  and  Sparta.  The  Katholoepistemiad  was 
the  preliminary  sketch  of  the  University  of  Michi- 

118 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

gan.  The  actual  result,  however,  was  no  more  than 
a  high  school. 

To  President  Tappan  the  German  university 
was  an  inspiration,  an  ideal  for  which  he  strug- 
gled heroically,  and  largely  because  of  which,  in 
1863,  in  the  prime  of  life,  he  was  removed  from 
office  by  pragmatical  regents.  There  is  reason 
to  believe  that,' before  any  other  American,  he 
naturalized  the  German  system  of  seminars  for 
instruction  in  original  investigation.  In  develop- 
ing scientific  courses  Michigan  was  antedated 
only  by  Harvard,  which,  under  the  influence  of 
Agassiz  and  others,  established  the  Lawrence 
Scientific  School  in  1847,  and  by  Brown  Uni- 
versity. Michigan  was  the  first  to  grant  the  de- 
gree of  Bachelor  of  Science,  and  it  adopted  an 
elective  system  as  early  as  1855-56,  though  lim- 
iting it  to  the  senior  year. 

Andrew  D.  White,  who  served  in  his  youth  at 
Michigan  as  professor  of  history,  says,  in  his 
autobiography,  that  the  real  beginning  of  a  uni- 
versity in  the  United  States,  in  the  modern  sense, 
was  made  at  Ann  Arbor,  under  Doctor  Tappan. 
Yet,  after  all  is  said,  the  institution  he  left  was 
essentially  of  the  type  of  the  English  college. 

119 


MICHIGAN 

It  fared  even  worse  with  the  American  tech- 
nological ideal  of  state  instruction  than  with  the 
German  ideal  of  purely  scientific  culture.  The 
Michigan  College  of  Agriculture,  established 
fifty  years  ago,  was  located,  not  at  Ann  Arbor, 
but  at  the  state  capital,  Lansing.  The  School  of 
Mines  was  established  in  mineral  regions  of  the 
northern  part  of  the  state.  Both  institutions  are 
quite  independent  of  the  university.  The  result 
has  probably  been  unfortunate  for  all  parties. 

At  Wisconsin  the  Agricultural  College,  by 
appealing  to  the  practical  sense  of  the  legisla- 
ture, has  carried  the  whole  university  financially, 
and  in  turn  has  received  strength  from  it  on  the 
side  of  pure  science.  Michigan  has  had  to  fight 
its  financial  battles  unaided,  and,  in  spite  of 
really  splendid  success  in  its  own  field,  it  has 
received  only  the  most  niggardly  support. 

Originally  of  the  same  general  type  as  Har- 
vard, Yale,  and  Princeton,  its  development  has 
closely  paralleled  theirs.  Upon  the  trunk  of  lib- 
eral collegiate  instruction  it  has  grafted  the 
branches  of  the  liberal  and  technological  profes- 
sions and,  as  I  have  indicated,  of  pure  scientific 
culture.  Instruction  in  the  liberal  arts  and  letters 

120 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

is  by  no  means  strong,  and  the  graduate  school 
is  admittedly  weak. 

The  professional  schools  are  outgrowths  of 
those  early  semester  lecture  courses,  and  in  them 
lies  the  great  strength  and  the  glory  of  the  uni- 
versity. The  Law  School  is  now  one  of  the  ablest, 
as  well  as  the  largest,  in  the  land.  It  has  almost 
entirely  discarded  the  old  textbook  system  of 
instruction  for  the  case  system,  and  will  probably 
make  the  change  complete  when  the  younger 
men  get  into  control.  The  Medical  School  is 
notably  large  and  able.  Situated  in  a  small  city, 
it  has  few  emergency  cases  calling  for  quick  and 
skillful  surgery,  but  the  state  hospital  gives  it 
unrivaled  advantages  for  the  study  of  the  more 
perplexing  field  of  chronic  disease.  There  is  a 
strong  Dental  School.  A  School  of  Unsectarian 
Theology  is  presently  to  be  established. 

The  School  of  Engineering  is  of  the  very 
highest  rank,  and  in  the  past  decade  has  had  a 
marvelous  increase  in  numbers.  One  of  its  dis- 
tinctive features  is  a  recently  built  naval  tank 
for  perfecting  the  models  of  ships.  Here  the  stu- 
dents receive  drawings  of  projected  vessels,  con- 
struct models  in  parafime,  and,  by  means  of  a 

121 


MICHIGAN 

trolley  running  above  the  water,  calculate  the 
precise  resistance  encountered  and  the  amount  of 
coal  per  mile  required  to  attain  a  given  speed. 
There  is  a  similar  tank  at  Washington,  and  one 
at  Cornell,  which,  however,  is  unroofed. 

Throughout  the  long  administration  of  Presi- 
dent Angell  the  progress  of  the  institution  has 
been  preeminently  sane  and  wise,  if  not  radical. 
His  public  services  as  Minister  to  China  and 
Turkey  have  reflected  great  and  wholly  merited 
credit  on  the  university.  Considering  the  parsi- 
monious support  doled  out  by  the  legislature,  and 
the  fact  that,  like  all  state  universities,  Michigan 
charges  no  more  than  a  nominal  tuition  fee,  his 
achievement  has  been  little  short  of  marvelous. 

One  of  his  favorite  innovations  is  the  diploma 
system,  by  which  pupils  from  certain  accredited 
schools  throughout  the  state  are  admitted  to  the 
university  without  examination.  The  teaching 
body  complains  that  much  of  the  material  with 
which  it  has  to  work  is  raw,  and  the  instruction 
in  the  Law  and  Medical  Schools  is  kept  to  a  low 
level  because  they  are  not  able  to  insist  on  a  high 
standard  of  qualification  for  entrance.  A  decided 
advance  in  this  respect  is  promised,  but,  at  best, 

122 


A  MIDDLE-EASTERN  UNIVERSITY 

the  schools  will  compare  unfavorably  with  the 
increasing  number  of  those  excluding  all  who 
have  not  attained  a  degree  equal  to  the  B.  A. 

But  on  financial  grounds  President  Angell 
has  been  justified.  The  university  stands  as  the 
pinnacle  and  crown  of  the  educational  system  of 
the  commonwealth,  and  as  such  commands  the 
support  of  the  people.  Within  the  last  year  its 
income  has  been  almost  doubled,  so  that,  if  the 
liberal  order  lasts,  the  institution  will  be  raised 
from  penury  to  a  competence.  There  are  respects 
in  which,  both  socially  and  intellectually,  Michi- 
gan seems  to  be  sleeping ;  but  it  needs  only  the 
touch  of  young  vigor  to  raise  it  in  all  respects  to 
the  proud  position  it  has  already  achieved  in 
numbers  and  in  national  representation. 


IV 
CORNELL : 

A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

/CORNELL  has  not  the  reputation  of  being 
^x  modest  with  regard  to  its  achievements,  and 
in  point  of  fact,  it  is  not  a  bit  modester  than  any 
healthy-minded  person  ought  to  be  ;  yet  the  dean 
of  the  College  of  Engineering,  when  questioned 
as  to  its  rank  as  a  technical  institution,  outvied 
the  violet.  He  equaled  the  arbutus,  indeed,  which 
is  much  more  truly  modest  than  the  violet ;  for, 
instead  of  rearing  aloft  its  shyly  averted  head  for 
all  the  world  to  see,  the  arbutus  hides  beneath  a 
mould  of  fallen  leaves,  and  blushes  pink  when  it 
is  discovered. 

By  no  means,  asserted  the  dean,  was  Cornell 
to  be  regarded  as  the  foremost  technical  institu- 
tion of  the  country.  There  were  many  schools  of 
engineering  of  the  first  rank  —  at  the  Massachu- 
setts Institute  of  Technology,  at  the  Universities 
of  Wisconsin,  Illinois,  and  Michigan,  at  Stevens, 
and  at  the  Troy  Polytechnic. 

124 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

Then  put  the  question  another  way,  said  the 
patient  inquirer :  Was  it  not  through  its  techni- 
cal schools  that  Cornell  first  made  its  reputation 
before  the  country? 

By  no  means.  It  was  the  high  ideals,  the 
creative  genius,  of  Ezra  Cornell  and  Andrew  D. 
White  that  made  its  scholarly  greatness,  and 
with  it  its  reputation. 

Third  down  and  no  game :  now  for  a  desperate 
drop-kick  for  goal.  Was  not  its  present  reputa- 
tion that  of  a  technical  institution  ?  It  seems  an 
innocent  question,  but  at  the  sound  of  it  Cornell 
was  itself  again. 

That  was  true,  said  Dean  Smith  —  unfortu- 
nately true,  for  the  reputation  was  an  error. 
Cornell  was  more  than  an  aggregation  of  tech- 
nical schools.  It  was,  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
word,  a  university.  The  mere  technical  school 
turns  out  a  narrow  specialist,  but  it  was  the 
ideal  of  Cornell  to  turn  out  specialists  who 
were  also  men  of  liberal  culture  —  able  thinkers, 
writers,  and  speakers,  efficient  men  among  men. 
The  modern  engineer  has  to  be  more  than  a 
technician ;  he  has  to  deal  with  the  exponents  of 
big  and  advanced  ideas,  to  make  himself  the  in- 

125 


CORNELL 

spiration  and  the  instrument  of  broad  sweeps  of 
industrial  progress.  He  should  be  able  to  touch 
life  on  all  sides  —  social,  intellectual,  aesthetic. 

Then  the  only  reason,  the  reporter  suggested, 
why  Cornell  could  not  claim  to  lead  the  tech- 
nical schools  was  that  it  was  in  a  different  and  a 
higher  class. 

The  shy  arbutus  blushed.  It  had  been  discov- 
ered. Cornell  was  a  technical  university,  perhaps, 
but  the  accent  was  strong  on  "  university." 

The  voice  of  Dean  Smith  was  that  of  the 
Ithaca  Zeitgeist.  President  Schurman  put  the 
case  thus :  When  Cornell  was  founded,  there 
happened  to  be  one  great  field  unoccupied  in 
American  universities  —  that  of  technical  train- 
ing. Cornell  tilled  it  to  the  utmost,  and  reaped 
the  reward.  From  the  outset,  however,  it  was 
strong  in  many  departments;  but  it  got  little 
credit  for  the  fact,  for  other  universities  were  as 
strong  or  stronger,  and,  having  long  occupied 
the  field,  unduly  overshadowed  Cornell.  The  pre- 
sent aim  of  the  university  is  to  make  known 
what  it  has  accomplished  in  arts,  pure  science, 
and  the  liberal  professions,  and  to  build  itself 
up  still  higher. 

126 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

Doctor  White,  who  lives  on  the  campus  and 
keeps  a  watchful  and  kindly  eye  on  the  creation 
of  his  youth,  points  out  that  from  the  start  the 
university  enjoyed  the  lectures  of  a  corps  of 
non-resident  professors,  which  included  the  most 
distinguished  men  of  the  time — Louis  Agassiz, 
James  Kussell  Lowell,  Goldwin  Smith,  Matthew 
Arnold,  James  Anthony  Froude,  E.  A.  Freeman. 
Always  the  aim  had  been  to  make  breadth  of 
character  and  depth  of  culture  go  hand  in  hand 
with  utilitarian  training. 

For  the  site  of  the  university  they  chose  a 
splendidly  picturesque  hill.  To  climb  it  from  the 
residential  quarter  below  caused  a  local  malady 
known  as  leg  fever;  but  what  of  that?  It  lay 
between  two  romantic  gorges,  the  wooded  decliv- 
ities of  which  murmured  to  the  rush  of  waters. 
In  one  of  them  gleamed  a  waterfall  higher  than 
Niagara.  From  the  summit  were  to  be  seen  the 
most  magnificent  views  of  hilltops,  valleys,  and 
Alpine  waters  commanded  by  any  university  in 
the  world. 

The  exercises  that  opened  Cornell  began  with 
the  pealing  of  chimes  —  a  luxury  unknown  in 
other  American  universities.  The  bells  hung 

127 


CORNELL 

in  a  rudely-improvised  wooden  steeple,  and  were 
manifestly  out  of  tune.  No  matter:  they  now 
hang  in  a  lofty  Romanesque  tower  surmounting 
the  library;  and  in  this  present  year  of  grace 
they  are  going  back  to  the  bell  founder  to  be 
recast  and  to  have  new  bells  added,  so  that  the 
chimes  may  peal  harmoniously  in  various  keys. 

There  you  have  the  symbol  of  the  university 
as  a  whole.  It  was  rude  in  its  beginnings,  and 
the  intended  note  is  not  always  sounded;  but  its 
ambition  is  to  run  through  the  full  gamut  of  edu- 
cation and  culture. 

Though  independent  in  endowment,  Cornell 
is  historically  and  in  spirit  closely  allied  to  our 
state  universities.  Its  origin  is  in  the  Morrill  land 
grant  of  1862,  from  which  so  many  noble  insti- 
tutions have  sprung.  Ezra  Cornell,  inventor  and 
company  manager,  was  serving  in  the  state  Sen- 
ate. A  self-made  man,  he  took  shame,  it  is  said, 
that  he  was  not  able  to  understand  the  Latin 
quotations  with  which  his  colleagues  interlarded 
their  speeches,  and  determined  that,  if  he  could 
help  matters,  no  eager  young  man  in  the  future 
should  suffer  his  humiliation.  However  this  may 
be,  he  united  with  a  youthful  fellow  senator, 

128 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

Andrew  D.  White,  to  prevent  New  York  from 
dividing,  scattering,  and  wasting  the  Federal 
grants  of  land,  as  so  many  other  states  had  done. 
Local  self-interest,  mainly  emanating  from  feeble 
and  jealous  denominational  colleges,  arrayed  it- 
self strongly  against  them  and  in  favor  of  parti- 
tioning the  lands. 

If  any  one  thinks  it  an  easy  and  a  delightful 
vocation  to  do  good  to  his  fellow  men,  let  him 
read  the  records  of  those  years.  To  check  the 
onslaughts  of  bigotry  and  ignorance,  Ezra  Cor- 
nell had  to  reach  deep  into  his  own  pocket;  and 
then,  to  secure  the  full  returns  from  the  lands 
put  in  his  charge,  he  was  obliged  to  devote  the 
best  years  of  his  maturity  to  locating  them  in 
distant  parts  of  the  country  and  to  administering 
them.  His  reward  was  lifelong  obloquy.  In  fact, 
after  forty  years  the  voice  of  calumny  is  still 
heard.  His  enemies  charged,  with  a  lack  of  con- 
sistency which  did  not  in  the  least  detract  from 
their  vehemence,  that  he  was  seeking  to  glorify 
his  name  at  the  expense  of  the  state,  that  he  was 
building  up  a  "godless"  university,  and  that  he 
was  using  the  national  land  grant  to  swell  his 
private  fortune.  His  was  a  nature  stoic  to  the 

129 


CORNELL 

point  of  austerity  and  taciturn  to  the  point  of 
secretiveness.  It  was  enough  for  him  that  he 
secured  for  New  York  many  times  the  sums  any 
other  state  received  from  its  Federal  grants  and 
left  the  university  free  from  the  dominance  alike 
of  bigotry  and  of  politics. 

It  is  highly  characteristic  that  Andrew  D. 
White  first  won  the  admiration  of  Ezra  Cornell 
by  opposing  him.  It  was  he,  in  fact,  who  pointed 
out  the  paramount  necessity  of  keeping  the  grant 
intact,  so  as  to  found  a  university  worthy  of  the 
name. 

He  had  no  illusions  as  to  the  kind  of  educa- 
tion that  had  made  their  fellow  Solons  so  glib  in 
Latinity.  Yale  man  though  he  was,  and,  what  is 
more,  a  Bones  man,  he  was  radically,  even  bit- 
terly, opposed  to  the  old-fashioned  curriculum  of 
his  alma  mater  —  a  series  of  dry,  soulless  reci- 
tations from  textbooks  in  science,  mathematics, 
and  the  classics,  which  every  man  was  forced  to 
undergo,  whatever  his  capacities,  and  beyond 
which  the  college  offered  nothing.  He  had  con- 
tinued his  education  in  Germany,  and  then  taken 
a  professorship  of  history  at  Ann  Arbor,  where 
he  found  the  German  tradition  in  full  swing. 

130 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

When  Ezra  Cornell  called  him  to  be  president  of 
the  new  foundation,  he  regarded  the  foremost 
of  the  state  universities  as  a  force  destined  to 
prove  the  salvation  of  higher  education  in  Amer- 
ica. As  he  has  himself  said,  Cornell  is  the  daugh- 
ter of  the  University  of  Michigan. 

As  happened  at  the  parent  institution,  German 
ideals  gave  way  for  the  time  to  American  practi- 
cality. The  older  colleges  of  the  East  had  pre- 
empted the  field  of  liberal  education  as  they 
understood  it,  and  were  attracting  the  sons  of 
the  rich.  Like  the  state  universities,  Cornell  had 
to  begin  with  boys  from  the  plow,  the  saw,  and 
the  anvil  —  a  necessity  by  no  means  disconcert- 
ing to  Ezra  Cornell.  His  ideal  is  inscribed  on  the 
seal  of  the  university.  "  I  would  found  an  insti- 
tution where  any  person  can  receive  instruction 
in  any  subject." 

To  live  up  to  the  terms  of  its  charter,  the  uni- 
versity had  to  open  its  doors  before  the  buildings, 
few  as  they  were,  were  completed  —  before  there 
were  doors  to  open,  or  windows  to  shut,  for  that 
matter.  This  was  in  1868.  Ezra  Cornell  an- 
nounced through  the  press  that  students  without 
means  would  be  able,  by  working  one-half  of 

131 


CORNELL 

each  day  on  the  unfinished  plant,  to  pay  the  ex- 
penses of  their  education,  which  would  occupy 
the  other  half.  Doctor  White  is  at  pains  to 
explain  in  his  autobiography  that  he  was  absent 
from  Ithaca  when  the  offer  was  made. 

Destitute  enthusiasts  arrived  in  droves,  unfit 
either  to  labor  or  to  learn.  One  was  the  father 
of  a  family,  and  was  grieved  to  find  that  no  provi- 
sion could  be  made  for  his  offspring  in  case  of  his 
demise.  'Another  was  a  teamster  from  a  Western 
state,  who  could  neither  read  nor  write.  When 
remonstrated  with,  he  quoted  the  words  of  the 
founder :  "  I  would  found  an  institution  where 
any  person  can  receive  instruction  in  any  sub- 
ject." Most  of  the  students,  however,  were  sturdy, 
self-respecting  youths,  who  hoped  by  hard  work 
and  self-denial  to  rise  above  their  origin. 

The  technical  colleges  lead  in  numbers,  as  in 
reputation.  Out  of  a  total  registration  of  3641, 
almost  one  third  are  under  Dean  Smith  in  the 
Sibley  College  of  Mechanical  Engineering.  This 
includes  a  department  of  electrical  engineering 
and  one  of  naval  architecture,  the  latter  having 
a  naval  tank  in  a  canal  above  a  neighboring 
waterfall,  which  is  only  less  admirable  than  that 

132 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

at  the  University  of  Michigan.  In  spite  of  the 
qualified  modesty  of  its  dean,  Sibley  College  is 
believed  at  Cornell,  and  in  many  other  places,  to 
be  the  most  successful  department  of  its  kind  in 
the  country  —  perhaps  in  any  country. 

It  gave  evidence  of  its  quality  as  early  as  the 
Centennial  Exposition  of  1876.  In  the  fair  de- 
voted to  a  century  of  American  progress,  Sibley 
exhibited  a  steam  engine  of  advanced  and  salable 
design,  surface  plates,  power  lathes,  and  tools  of 
precision,  all  constructed  for  the  occasion  by  its 
pupils.  The  country  received  the  exhibit  with 
the  neglectful  silence  which  for  so  many  decades 
made  modesty  of  doubtful  value  at  Ithaca.  In  a 
neighboring  booth  a  school  of  technology  in 
Moscow  put  forth  certain  engines  and  tools  of 
antiquated  design  and  no  merchantable  value, 
but  exquisitely  finished  and  showily  arranged. 
The  head  of  an  American  technical  school  wrote 
an  enthusiastic  magazine  article  declaring  that 
the  Russian  exhibit  pointed  out  the  path  of  pro- 
gress to  American  schools. 

In  his  fascinating  autobiography,  Andrew  D. 
White,  the  mildest-mannered  man  that  ever  com- 
mitted murder  with  flat  irony,  relates  that,  when 

133 


CORNELL 

he  was  Minister  to  Russia,  one  Wischniegradsky, 
formerly  head  of  the  Moscow  School  of  Tech- 
nology and  then  Minister  of  Finance,  praised 
American  railroading.  The  climax  was  reached 
when  Moscow  methods  proved  inadequate  to  Rus- 
sian needs,  and  "  men  from  American  schools, 
trained  in  the  methods  of  Cornell,  sent  out 
locomotives  and  machinery  of  all  sorts  for  the 
new  Trans-Siberian  Railway,  the  starting  point 
of  which  was  this  very  Moscow,  whose  technical 
school  was  praised  by  American  critics." 

Another  of  the  triumphs  of  Sibley  was  to 
build  a  dynamo  and  with  it  light  the  college  cam- 
pus, when  electric  lighting  was  all  but  unknown 
in  the  United  States.  Doctor  White  also  relates 
that  he  foresaw  the  future  of  electricity,  and, 
overcoming  opposition  from  the  university  by 
pledging  his  own  private  resources,  founded 
the  department  of  electrical  engineering  - 
"  the  first  ever  known  in  the  United  States  and, 
so  far  as  I  can  learn,  the  first  ever  known  in 
any  country." 

Adding  to  Sibley  the  College  of  Civil  Engi- 
neering (about  five  hundred),  the  College  of 
Architecture,  the  State  College  of  Agriculture, 

134 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

and  the  State  College  of  Veterinary  Medicine, 
the  number  of  technical  students  is  about  two 
thousand,  or  nearly  two  thirds  of  the  total  regis- 
tration. The  two  latter,  rejoicing  in  recent  liberal 
grants  from  the  state,  have  erected  new  build- 
ings and  are  looking  to  a  rapid  increase  in  qual- 
ity of  instruction  and  number  of  students.  There 
is  no  school  of  mines. 

All  of  these  colleges,  except  possibly  that  of 
architecture,  are  of  the  highest  rank,  having  a 
long  record  of  able  teaching  and  famous  gradu- 
ates. Nowhere  has  the  ideal  of  scientific  training 
in  a  profession  given  way  to  a  specious  "  practi- 
cality." The  engineering  students  learn  to  cal- 
culate actual  stresses,  and  to  study  the  economic 
application  of  power ;  but  they  spend  little  of 
their  time  in  manual  labor,  and  none  of  the  funds 
of  the  institution  in  operating  blast-furnaces  and 
Bessemer  converters.  The  students  in  agriculture 
study  the  chemistry  of  soils  and  the  preparation 
of  lotions  for  exterminating  destructive  insects 
and  parasitic  bacteria ;  they  make  reports  on  the 
efficiency  of  fertilizers  and  on  the  productivity 
of  various  seeds ;  they  assist  in  the  manufacture 
of  butter  and  cheese  by  means  of  the  most  recent 

135 


CORNELL 

methods ;  they  study  the  breeding  and  the  care 
of  cattle,  horses,  sheep,  pigs,  and  poultry.  But  the 
routine  work  of  the  farm  is  delegated  to  hired  men. 

The  colleges  of  liberal  professions  are  smaller 
and  less  distinguished.  There  is  no  school  of 
theology.  The  Law  School  has  a  little  over  two 
hundred  students,  all  of  them  taking  a  three 
years'  course,  though  a  four  years'  course  is 
offered.  Its  instruction  is  mainly  by  the  case 
system,  though  some  of  the  teaching  is  from 
textbooks.  The  College  of  Medicine  numbers 
over  three  hundred  regular  students.  To  gain 
hospital  facilities,  the  -iwe  upper  classes  are  in 
New  York  City,  where  the  institution  is  doing 
excellent  work.  The  instruction  of  the  tw«4ower 
year$  is  given  both  in  New  York  and  in  Ithaca. 

The  College  of  Arts  and  Sciences  numbers 
only  a  little  more  than  a  fifth  of  the  total  regis- 
tration, and  is  one  third  smaller  than  the  single 
technical  department  of  mechanical  and  electrical 
engineering.  Its  departments  of  economics,  his- 
tory, and  philosophy  are  strong,  owing  probably 
to  Doctor  White's  influence,  as  are  also  the  de- 
partments of  pure  science,  owing  to  the  influence 
of  the  technical  colleges. 

136 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

From  the  outset  the  instruction  has  been  in- 
spired by  German  ideals,  and  the  elective  system 
is  espoused  with  an  ardor  only  equaled  by  its 
quixotic  champion.  Harvard.  Museums  have  been 
an  object  of  especial  care. 

The  library  is  one  of  the  three  or  four  largest 
in  the  country,  numbering  350,000  volumes, 
among  which  there  is  a  very  small  proportion  of 
superseded  books  and  other  dead  matter.  Doctor 
White  has  given  it  his  vast  private  collection  in 
history  and  economics;  and  it  contains  also  the 
best  collection  in  the  country  in  Dante,  Petrarch, 
and  Romance  literature  in  general.  The  gradu- 
ate school,  numbering  over  two  hundred,  is  large 
in  proportion  to  the  undergraduate  department. 
Yet,  after  all  has  been  said,  both  are  of  a  second- 
ary order. 

In  its  technical  departments,  in  short,  Cornell 
is  seriously  rivaled  only  by  the  Massachusetts 
Institute  of  Technology;  but  in  all  other  depart- 
ments many  institutions  overtop  it. 

It  is  not  quite  clear  that  Cornell  has  succeeded 
in  imbuing  its  technical  students  with  the  true 
spirit  of  university  education.  Some  of  them  are 
college  graduates,  but  for  the  most  part  they 

137 


CORNELL 

come  straight  from  the  preparatory  school.  The 
lectures  of  the  brilliant  group  of  non-resident 
professors  used  to  assemble  and  inspire  the  entire 
university;  but  they  are  a  thing  of  the  past,  and 
the  regular  work  is  so  absorbing  that  the  students 
have  little  time  for  non-technical  culture. 

In  law  and  medicine  an  increasing  number  of 
American  institutions  keep  alive  the  true  univer- 
sity spirit  by  requiring  the  A.  B.  degree  for  en- 
trance. The  Cornell  Medical  School  encourages 
students  to  take  the  A.  B.  by  permitting  them  to 
count  the  last  year  in  the  course  as  the  first  year 
of  medical  study,  so  that  both  degrees  may  be 
taken  in  seven  years.  Both  Medical  and  Law 
Schools  now  require  two  years  of  college  work, 
and  the  Medical  School  will  next  year  require 
four  years.  But  as  yet  the  vast  majority  of  stu- 
dents are  without  culture  in  the  humanities. 

The  enlargement  of  intelligence  and  the  train- 
ing of  the  mind  are  only  a  part,  however,  of  the 
function  of  higher  education.  Popular  common- 
sense  regards  our  universities  as  seminars  for  the 
propagation  of  manners  as  well  as  of  the  scientific 
spirit  —  laboratories  for  the  testing  of  character 
as  well  as  of  gases.  It  is  often  said  that  one  can 

138 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

tell  a  Yale  man  from  a  Harvard  man  or  a  Prince- 
ton man  at  sight.  In  this  matter  of  university 
tradition  and  atmosphere  Cornell  has,  in  the  scant 
four  decades  of  its  life,  made  notable  progress. 
It  was  once  the  supercilious  habit  of  older  insti- 
tutions to  look  down  on  it  as  a  university  of 
farmers.  That,  in  some  measure,  it  still  is,  but, 
the  fact  is  very  far  from  being  prejudicial. 

The  ambition  to  rise  means  energy,  but  not 
always  ability.  Doctor  White  early  devised  an 
original  and  highly  effective  device  for  insuring 
that  those  who  receive  financial  aid  from  the  uni- 
versity shall  be  fit  to  profit  by  it.  There  are  four 
scholarships  for  each  of  the  one  hundred  and 
fifty  assembly  districts  of  the  state  of  New  York, 
and  they  are  awarded  by  competitive  examina- 
tion. When  students  already  in  residence  are 
overtaken  by  poverty,  their  fees  are  remitted  and 
money  is  advanced,  but  only  in  case  they  are  of 
proved  mental  calibre.  Mediocrity  is  thus  pre- 
vented from  leaving  its  proper  field  on  the  farm 
or  in  the  mechanic  arts  to  make  a  failure  in  the 
technical  and  learned  professions.  The  Cornell 
system  has  the  further  advantage  of  creating  a 
vital  bond  between  the  state  school  system  and 

139 


CORNELL 

the  university  —  a  bond  which  has  already  re- 
sulted in  raising  the  standards  of  both.  In  so 
far  as  Cornell  is  a  farmers'  university,  the  fact 
is  to  its  soundest  advantage. 

And  it  is  far  more  than  this.  Year  by  year  it 
is  attracting  larger  numbers  of  the  sons  of  the 
well-to-do  who  respect  simple  and  solid  efficiency. 
Over  half  of  the  students  come  from  New  York ; 
but  every  state,  territory,  and  dependency  is 
represented  in  approximate  proportion  to  its 
population,  from  Pennsylvania,  which  sends  over 
three  hundred  students,  to  Indian  Territory, 
Porto  Rico,  and  Hawaii.  Twenty -nine  foreign 
countries  send  one  hundred  and  thirty  students, 
among  them  all  the  leading  countries  of  Europe, 
Asia,  and  South  America.  There  is  a  Cosmopoli- 
tan Club  at  Cornell,  which  (the  child,  in  this 
respect  at  least,  being  father  of  the  man) 
parent  of  the  similar  organization  at  Michigan. 
Wholesomely  sectional  in  its  origin,  Cornell  is 
wholesomely  national  and  international. 

It  might  almost  be  taken  as  a  corollary  oi 
this  that  its  spirit  is  vigorously  athletic.  Dr. 
White  was  himself  a  boating  man,  and  penn< 
the  first  challenge  to  row  that  ever  passed  b< 

140 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

tween  Yale  and  Harvard.  He  has  always  encour- 
aged sane  inter-university  sports,  and  he  recalls 
with  special  pride  that  he  gave  the  shells  for  the 
first  contests  between  rival  factions  at  home.  It 
used  to  be  said,  and  not  altogether  in  jest,  that 
Cornell  owed  its  success  on  the  water  to  the  fact 
that  the  men  had  to  climb  the  hill  so  many  times 
a  day.  Now  there  is  a  trolley  ;  but  the  university 
is  more  clearly  than  ever  supreme  in  boating  — 
an  eminence  held  by  no  other  university  in  any 
sport,  not  even  by  Yale  in  football.  In  times 
past  Ithaca  seemed  prone  to  assert  its  own  glory. 
Much  is  to  be  forgiven  to  youth,  especially  when 
it  is  denied  the  opportunity  to  prove  its  mettle. 
Now  Cornell  has  met  its  chief  opponents  and 
vanquished  them,  and  the  once  vociferous  rowing 
dog  barks  no  more.  Even  Yale  is  forgiven  to 
the  extent  of  occasional  baseball  games. 

For  variety  in  athletic  prowess  Cornell  is  less 
remarkable  than  for  excellence  in  its  favorite 
sport;  but  in  recent  years  it  has  made  rapid 
advances  in  football,  baseball,  on  the  track,  and 
in  several  minor  sports.  In  Ithaca,  for  the 
first  time,  I  saw  undergraduates  making  "  dope 
sheets"  on  the  intercollegiate  championships, 

141 


CORNELL 

and  checking  them  off  as  the  results  were  an- 
nounced by  telegraph.  No  influence  is  more 
powerful  in  creating  a  vigorous  and  united  uni- 
versity spirit  than  athletics. 

The  social  organization,  like  that  at  Michigan, 
blends  the  characteristic  features  of  the  West 
and  the  East.  Nowhere,  to  my  knowledge,  has 
the  fraternity  system  been  more  fully  developed. 
The  chapter  houses  line  the  lofty,  wooded  crest 
of  Cascadilla  Gorge,  in  which  the  song  of  birds 
mingles  with  the  song  of  tumbling  waters,  or 
hang  on  the  declivity  of  the  campus  hill,  com- 
manding the  noble  prospect  of  Cayuga  Lake  and 
the  restful  lap  of  Ithaca  Valley,  with  its  vigorous 
hills  beyond.  If  the  homes  of  American  under- 
graduates are  anywhere  more  sumptuous  and 
beautiful,  I  do  not  know  them.  Some  of  the 
houses  are  of  picturesque  Tudor  half-timber, 
others  of  solid  masonry.  The  interiors  are  richly 
and  soberly  furnished  in  mahogany,  leather,  and 
heavy  silk.  One  dining-room  I  saw  had  a  vaulted 
ceiling,  with  heads  of  elk  and  moose  on  the 
walls.  Almost  every  house  has  its  tennis  court. 
One  chapter  has  an  independent  structure  for  its 
secret  conclaves,  starlike  in  ground  plan,  and 

142 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

with  a  dome  so  monumental  that,  misled  by  my 
memories  of  Grant's  tomb,  I  at  first  took  it  for 
the  mausoleum  of  Ezra  Cornell,  which  proved  to 
be  far  less  impressive. 

The  boyish  love  of  unmeaning  mummery  and 
trumped-up  mystery,  in  which  our  secret  socie- 
ties had  their  origin,  still  persists.  Some  of  the 
houses  have  the  charters  of  their  rivals,  stolen  in 
midnight  raids  into  ill-guarded  penetralia.  It  is 
admitted  that  a  perusal  of  these  reveals  the  child- 
ish vacuity  that  underlies  all  this  miming  and 
mystic  hand-gripping ;  but  the  stolen  scrolls  are 
not  restored.  Quite  lately  one  house  lost  its 
senior  rocking-chairs,  carved  with  the  names  of 
departed  members,  which  had  incautiously  been 
left  at  night  on  the  veranda.  Priceless  booty ! 
If  anything  could  destroy  the  impressiveness  of 
the  chapter  houses,  or  of  the  life  that  centres  in 
them,  it  would  be  this  small-boyish  —  is  it  not 
rather  small-girlish  ?  —  make-believe. 

Curiously  undemocratic,  all  this,  and  out  of 
tune  with  the  foundation  of  Ezra  Cornell !  It  is 
not,  as  has  so  often  been  charged,  that  the  frater- 
nities breed  a  spirit  of  inordinate  luxury.  The 
rooms  cost  no  more  than  habitable  apartments 

143 


CORNELL 

elsewhere.  In  some  of  the  houses  the  table  is 
liberal.  For  the  first  time  in  my  eastward  wan- 
derings in  fraternity-land,  there  were  eggs  and 
meat  for  breakfast,  soup  and  fresh  vegetables  for 
dinner.  But  the  cost,  including  service,  was  only 
five  dollars  a  week.  The  expense  of  building  the 
houses  has  been  borne  by  alumni.  It  is  true,  no 
doubt,  that  many  fraternity  men  enjoy  a  comfort 
and  elegance  which  they  have  not  had  in  their 
own  homes,  and  which  they  may  never  achieve 
for  themselves.  But  it  is  a  poor  spirit  that  would 
be  corrupted  by  the  fact.  What  higher  function 
has  a  university  than  to  inspire  one  to  solid  and 
well-ordered  living?  The  material  comforts  of 
fraternity  life  are  only  the  outward  expression  of 
an  inner  spirit  of  comradeship,  which  is  very  real 
and  potent.  Each  chapter  is  a  family,  and  re- 
ceives the  bounty  of  its  alumni  in  the  same  spirit 
in  which  one  receives  the  hospitality  of  the  pa- 
ternal roof. 

At  Cornell,  as  elsewhere,  the  real  harm  of  the 
fraternity  system  is  that,  in  intensifying  the  social 
life,  it  narrows  it.  In  order  to  preserve  the  spirit 
of  common  brotherhood  the  chapters  are  limited 
to  from  twenty  to  twenty-five  members ;  and  in 

144 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

order  to  keep  up  the  standard  of  membership 
incoming  freshmen  are  pledged  before  they 
arrive,  or  are  "  rushed  "  within  an  inch  of  their 
lives  from  the  moment  they  step  off  the  train. 
One  freshman  arrived  with  his  parents.  Three 
fraternities  vied  for  the  honor  of  bearing  this 
Homeric  youth  into  Cornell  life.  The  most 
active  of  them  went  up  the  line  a  station  and 
grabbed  the  boy.  The  second  boarded  the  train 
at  Ithaca  and  grabbed  his  father.  The  third 
had  to  content  itself  with  his  mother.  But  this 
fraternity  had  the  fortune  of  the  cricket  in  Hans 
Andersen's  fairy  tale,  which  won  a  high-jumping 
contest  against  the  grasshopper  and  the  flea  by 
tactfully  jumping  into  the  princess's  lap.  The 
husband  flew  to  the  rescue  of  his  wife,  and  the 
freshman  bleated  and  ran  to  his  parents,  so  that 
the  fraternity  that  had  begun  with  the  mother 
landed  the  son. 

As  the  fraternity  spirit  is  stronger  than  at 
Michigan,  so  the  tendency  toward  a  general 
social  life  is  weaker,  though  still  distinct  and 
highly  picturesque.  One  of  its  earliest  manifes- 
tations was  a  chapter  of  T.  N.  E.,  a  lawless, 
mock-fraternity  organization.  In  those  days  the 

145 


CORNELL 

authorities  had  an  idea  of  building  up  a  system 
of  self-government  in  the  student  body.  T.  N.  E., 
by  virtue  of  its  pull  with  the  non-fraternity  ele- 
ment, succeeded  in  swinging  one  of  the  elections, 
and  put  in  power  a  body  of  men  notorious  as 
leaders  in  lawlessness.  The  meetings  of  these 
student  lawgivers  were  held  in  the  favorite  beer 
saloon,  and  the  announcements  of  them  in  the 
student  daily  ended  with  the  very  polite  request : 
"Members  will  please  bring  their  own  steins." 
In  his  autobiography  Doctor  White  speaks  in 
general  terms  of  his  own  attempt  to  make  the 
student  body  wisely  self-governing,  and  adds,  in 
still  more  general  terms,  that  it  did  not  prove 
successful.  T.  N.  E.  made  it  a  business  in  life 
to  ridicule  the  fraternities,  as  a  result  of  which 
the  leading  chapters  forbade  their  members  to 
join.  The  society  fell  before  the  opposition  of 
its  two  chosen  enemies,  the  fraternities  and  the 
Faculty. 

There  is  a  junior  society  and  a  senior  society, 
— the  Mummy  and  the  Nelanda, — elected  on  the 
basis  of  social  popularity.  They  have  no  club- 
rooms,  but  meet  at  the  favorite  beer  saloon. 
It  is  presumable  that  the  members  bring  their 

146 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

own  steins  without  exhortation.  Certainly  they 
wear  the  club  caps.  Together  with  the  names 
and  the  traditions  of  the  clubs,  these  are  handed 
down  from  senior  to  sophomore,  classes  with 
even  numbers  always  belonging  to  one  society, 
those  with  odd  numbers  to  the  other.  The  caps 
are  emblazoned  with  certain  Hebrew  letters,  which 
to  the  vulgar  view  resemble  Yiddish  kosher-meat 
signs. 

The  most  popular  organization  is  the  Savage 
Club,  formed  by  members  of  the  Glee  Club  who 
were  entertained  by  the  Savage  Club  of  London, 
at  the  time  of  Cornell's  attempt  at  Henley.  To  be 
elected  one  has  to  be  master  of  some  manner  of 
entertaining,  and  the  meetings  generally  have 
the  object  of  extending  hospitality  to  the  actors 
in  a  company  playing  in  Ithaca. 

There  are  also  two  clubs,  the  Quill  and  Dag- 
ger and  the  Sphinx  Head,  to  which  men  are 
elected  on  the  basis  of  what  they  have  accom- 
plished for  the  university  in  the  various  student 
organizations.  Like  Michigamua  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  Michigan,  they  aim  to  take  the  place  of 
the  senior  societies  at  Yale.  In  some  minor  mat- 
ters they  have  proved  efficient.  They  have  dis- 

147 


CORNELL 

suaded  certain  student  reporters  from  sensation- 
ally misrepresenting  the  university,  and  have 
even  induced  a  mayor  of  Ithaca,  a  Cornell  gradu- 
ate, not  to  exploit  in  the  college  daily  his  plan 
for  silencing  bibulous  undergraduates  on  their 
way  home  in  the  small  hours.  In  parenthesis 
I  may  say  that  Cornell  is  by  no  means  intemper- 
ate —  the  fellows  have  to  work  too  hard.  When 
Henry,  the  Candy  Man,  was  banished  from  the 
campus  by  the  Faculty,  the  senior  societies  re- 
stored him  to  his  ancient  privilege.  Also,  they 
instituted  the  custom  of  the  freshmen  burning 
their  own  caps  in  the  class  bonfire.  It  was  once 
proposed  to  increase  the  resemblance  to  the  Yale 
senior  societies  by  making  the  clubs  secret,  but 
the  fraternities  proved  so  jealous  of  their  hold 
on  their  members  that  the  plan  was  abandoned; 
which  suggests  that  these  senior  societies,  like 
Michigamua,  are  not  destined  to  achieve  the  pre- 
dominance of  their  prototypes. 

The  most  original  and  picturesque  student  cus- 
tom at  Cornell  is  Spring  Day,  the  end  of  which 
is  to  promote  hilarity  and  support  the  athletic 
teams.  As  soon  as  the  May  weather  permits,  the 
whole  university  turns  out  on  the  campus  in  car- 

148 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

nival  array.  For  days  before  the  student  body 
has  been  agog  with  anticipation. 

Every  morning  the  Cornell  "Sun"  prints  some 
such  squib  as  this  :  "  President  Roosevelt  slipped 
up  yesterday  on  his  Cabinet  tennis  court,  and, 
landing  on  his  hip-pocket,  broke  a  twenty-dollar 
bill.  He  announces  that  he  will  come  to  Ithaca 
and  spend  the  change  on  Spring  Day." 

In  a  huge  tent  on  the  campus  fellows  from  the 
Law  School  convene  in  gowns  and  wigs  to  illus- 
trate "  how  justice  is  dispensed  with  at  Cornell." 
Outside  the  college  wit  officiates  as  barker.  It  is 
safer  to  heed  his  admonitions  and  buy  a  ticket, 
for  impromptu  constables  make  a  business  of 
haling  in  for  public  trial  those  who  do  not. 
A  professor  of  the  legal  Faculty  was  once  tried 
solemnly  and  in  form  for  "  busting  "  the  presid- 
ing judge  in  one  of  his  courses. 

The  leading  student  organizations  vie  in  pre- 
senting spectacles.  The  Cosmopolitan  Club  stands 
at  a  distinct  advantage.  A  Latin- American  stu- 
dent, devotee  of  the  bull-fight,  rigged  up  a  papier- 
mache  bull  on  wheels,  and  slew  it  valiantly  in 
the  orthodox  manner.  This  was  the  origin  of  the 
report,  made  much  of  in  South  American  papers, 

149 


CORNELL 

that  the  United  States,  in  spite  of  its  professed 
abhorrence  of  bloody  sport,  practiced  bull-fight- 
ing in  its  universities.  Another  Cosmopolitan 
stunt  was  to  represent  a  negro  prize-fight  with 
the  aid  of  burnt  cork.  The  great  hit  in  connec- 
tion with  this  was  a  Chinaman  in  gorgeous  silk 
costume,  and  with  his  pigtail  (which  his  Emperor 
had  permitted  him  to  cut  off  when  he  left  home) 
securely  tied  in  place,  who  announced  through  a 
megaphone  :  "  Dass  nigga  plize-fight !  "  In  the 
evening  a  musical  show  is  given  indoors,  with 
the  aid  of  the  Savages.  Last  spring  the  festival 
netted  over  two  thousand  dollars. 

At  Cornell,  as  at  other  American  universities, 
the  one  great  social  problem  centres  in  the  non- 
fraternity  men.  In  spite  of  the  broad  develop- 
ment of  fraternities,  two  thirds  of  the  student 
body  lodge  and  board  in  the  town,  and  lead  the 
life  of  small  cliques.  The  undergraduates  are 
aware  of  their  necessities,  and  are  already  collect- 
ing funds  for  a  grill-room,  located  in  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  building  on  the  campus,  which  is  to  serve 
the  purposes  of  a  Union ;  but  the  project  is  far 
less  promising,  even,  than  that  at  Michigan. 

Like  Princeton  and  Harvard,  and,  as  we  shall 
150 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

find,  like  the  universities  of  Chicago  and  Wis- 
consin also,  Cornell  is  seeking  the  remedy  for 
student  disorganization  in  the  "quad/'  or  resi- 
dential hall.  Doctor  White,  as  he  records  in  his 
autobiography,  has  dreamed  from  his  youth  of 
an  American  university  that  shall  house  its 
undergraduates  in  separate  communities  and  in 
beautiful,  well-ordered  buildings  like  those  of  the 
English  colleges.  Mentioning  the  subject  to  Pre- 
sident Schurman,  I  found  that  his  mind  had 
traveled  the  same  path.  For  years  he  has  agitated 
the  subject  in  his  annual  reports.  I  quote  from 
a  report  of  nine  years  ago :  "  No  provision  is 
made  by  Cornell  University  for  the  social  life 
of  the  men  students.  In  the  absence  of  halls  of 
residence  for  students,  Greek-letter  fraternities 
have  sprung  up ;  but,  cordially  as  those  are  to  be 
welcomed,  they  cannot  take  the  place  of  univer- 
sity halls,  for  they  rest  on  an  entirely  different, 
and  indeed  antagonistic,  principle.  A  residen- 
tial hall  is  open  to  every  student;  a  fraternity 
house  is  closed  to  all  except  the  few  who  are 
invited  to  become  members.  The  one  is  demo- 
cratic, the  other  selective.  Hence,  if  one  looks 
deep  enough,  it  will  be  apparent  that  the  more 

151 


CORNELL 

fully  developed  the  system  of  Greek-letter  frater- 
nities at  a  university,  the  greater  is  the  need  of 
residential  halls.  And  if,  in  addition  to  such 
halls,  there  were  a  dining-hall  in  which  the  men 
from  the  fraternity  houses  and  men  from  the 
public  halls  took  their  meals  together,  the  ar- 
rangement would  make  for  democracy  and  fra- 
ternity and  tend  to  eliminate  cliquishness  and 
social  sectarianism.  The  dream  of  residential 
halls,  dining-hall,  and  club  or  common  room  will 
undoubtedly  one  day  be  fulfilled  at  Cornell  Uni- 
versity." 

The.  scheme  which  is  here  outlined  lacks  one 
feature  of  that  contemplated  at  Chicago  and 
Wisconsin.  It  does  not  provide  that  each  hall 
have  its  own  individual  commons.  President 
Schurman  admitted  that  no  agency  was  more 
powerful  in  developing  community  life  and  spirit 
than  a  separate  gathering  place  for  breakfasting, 
lunching,  and  dining.  There  is  an  eternal  and 
apparently  inalienable  connection  between  food 
and  fellowship.  He  at  once  made  inquiries  of  the 
steward  of  the  women's  commons  as  to  the  rela- 
tive cost  of  feeding  students  by  the  hundred  and 
by  the  thousand.  If  the  buying  was  done  for  the 

152 


',  '  '  •  •••.'••• 

' '  '  *'      '' 


A  TECHNICAL  UNIVERSITY 

gross  number  to  be  fed,  we  found,  it  would  add 
only  a  fraction  of  a  dollar  a  week  per  student  to 
feed  them  in  communities  of  two  hundred. 

In  one  respect  Cornell  has  a  unique  advantage. 
There  is  an  abundance  of  land  near  the  campus, 
of  no  great  value,  much  of  which  is  already 
owned  by  the  university.  Instead  of  a  quadran- 
gle, each  hall  could  have  an  inclosed  garden, 
with  plenty  of  tennis  courts,  and  even  squash 
courts  and  handball  courts  for  winter.  Sloping 
down  from  the  campus  toward  the  lake  and  the 
valley  is  a  tract  which  would  afford  a  lordly  view 
and  throw  the  architecture  of  the  buildings  into 
splendid  relief. 

The  women  students  already  have  a  residential 
hall  and  commons.  Otherwise,  their  lot  is  not 
the  most  fortunate.  The  men  regard  them  as 
having  "butted  in"  and  impaired  the  standing 
of  what  is  otherwise  a  typical  Eastern  university 
of  first  rank. 

The  women  hold  the  balance  of  power  politi- 
cally, and  in  elections  manifest  the  solidarity  of 
hall  life  by  voting  in  a  body.  It  is  said  that  the 
man  who  does  not  "fuss"  is  a  political  corpse. 
Before  elections  Sage  Hall  is  a  mighty  stamping 

153 


CORNELL 

ground.  One  candidate  is  said  to  have  given 
every  girl  in  his  class  a  box  of  candy,  and  an- 
other a  box  of  flowers.  The  flower  man  is  said  to 
have  fared  better;  but  let  it  be  recorded  to  the 
credit  of  the  sex  that  both  were  defeated. 

It  may  be  inferred  that  the  determination  to 
make  the  university  spirit  dominate  the  technical 
is  mostly  as  yet  in  the  air.  This  is  not  quite  the 
case.  The  recently-built  Hall  of  the  Humanities 
named  after  Goldwin  Smith  is  one  of  the  very 
few  educational  edifices  of  real  beauty  in  Amer- 
ica, and  is  substantial  earnest  of  Cornell  deter- 
mination to  develop  as  an  institution  of  liberal 
culture.  It  has  often  been  said,  and  no  doubt 
is  in  some  measure  true,  that  the  great  danger  in 
American  life  is  the  dominance  of  the  spirit  of 
mere  utility.  No  sign  of  the  times  could  be  more 
promising  than  the  fact  that  our  foremost  tech- 
nical university  should  be  bending  its  chief 
energies  toward  the  humanities. 


CHICAGO : 
A  UNIVERSITY   BY   ENCHANTMENT 

rpHROUGHOUT  its  young  and  strenuous  life 
-•-  the  University  of  Chicago  has  had  to  strug- 
gle against  two  damaging  accusations  —  that  it 
is  a  Standard  Oil  institution,  and  that  it  is  a  hot- 
bed of  revolutionary  doctrine.  Across  its  official 
letterheads  is  inscribed  :  "  Founded  by  John  D. 
Rockefeller;"  and  from  day  to  day  the  news- 
paper press  has  flaunted  in  staring  headlines 
irresponsible  utterances  of  its  Faculty,  in  litera- 
ture and  in  sociology.  Either  fact  would  con- 
demn an  ordinary  institution  of  learning.  Shall 
this  one  survive  them  both  ? 

For  fifteen  years  it  has  not  only  survived 
them,  but  prospered  exceedingly.  That  is  won- 
derful —  until  you  stop  to  think  of  it.  Extremes 
have  met,  and  in  a  measure  neutralized  each 
other.  The  generation  that  has  invented  the  per- 
fume concert  is  not  at  a  loss  to  inject  into  the 

155 


CHICAGO 

taint  of  money  a  countertaint  to  make  it  nose- 
able.  Do  these  instructors  of  youth  live  on 
monopolistic  spoils?  At  least  they  can  show  that 
they  have  retained  their  liberty  by  proclaiming 
abhorrent  sensational  doctrine.  The  institution 
is  popularly  known  as  the  Midway  University  — 
the  implication  being  that  it  is  the  intellectual 
and  spiritual  descendant  of  the  multifarious  side- 
show which  flourished  on  its  site  at  the  time  of 
its  founding,  during  the  Chicago  Fair.  It  is  all 
very  characteristic  of  the  most  paradoxical  and 
turbulent  of  modern  communities  —  the  so- 
called  Garden  City,  the  flowers  in  which  are 
the  fire-belching  chimneys  of  industry  and  anar- 
chistic bombs.  Socialistic  Chicago  jeers  at  the 
university  because  of  its  founder,  and  conserva- 
tive Chicago  denounces  its  radical  teachings.  Cha- 
otic? Yes,  if  you  will.  But  in  half  a  generation 
the  university  has  taken  its  place,  in  size  and  in 
the  character  of  its  teaching,  as  in  wealth,  among 
the  foremost  in  the  land.  Thus  spake  Zara- 
thustra:  There  needs  must  be  chaos  to  give 
birth  to  a  star. 

The  chief  source  of  misrepresentation  has  been 
the  Chicago  press,  and  through  it  the  press  of 

156 


A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

the  entire  country.  One  of  the  most  profitable 
means  of  self-support  for  students  is  to  write  up 
the  university  news.  Flagrant  exaggerations  in- 
crease the  earnings,  and  are  welcomed  as  evidence 
of  journalistic  skill. 

A  characteristic  example  occurred  in  recent 
memory  at  the  University  of  Michigan.  A  pro- 
fessor enlivened  his  lecture  with  a  little  talk  on 
various  conventions  in  courtship.  The  student- 
journalist —  representing  a  paper  that  boasts 
itself,  and  not  without  color  of  justification,  the 
best  all-around  newspaper  in  the  country — re- 
ported that  he  illustrated  his  lecture  by  getting 
a  woman  pupil  up  on  the  platform  and  acting 
out  with  her  in  realistic  detail  the  form  of  pro- 
posal —  and  acceptance  —  which  he  himself  pre- 
ferred. The  item  was  widely  copied  and  hilari- 
ously commented  upon.  The  undergraduate  was 
expelled,  and  was  immediately  taken  on  the  staff 
of  the  great  newspaper. 

When  applied  to  Chicago  University,  the  effect 
of  such  methods  may  easily  be  imagined.  The 
case  of  Professor  Triggs  is  well  known.  That 
he  lacked  common-sense  and  balance  is  obvious. 
None  the  less,  he  was  the  victim  of  persecution. 

157 


CHICAGO 

His  first  leap  into  the  spot-light  was  the  result 
of  a  speech  at  a  fraternity  dinner  on  the  topic  of 
"  The  Most  Important  Question  in  the  World." 
He  said  that  for  himself  it  was  what  to  name  his 
new  baby.  Postprandially  foolish  the  remark 
may  have  been  ;  but  what  shall  be  said  of  a 
press  that  made  a  sensation  of  it  ?  From  that 
time  whatever  he  said  —  and  he  had  the  gift  of 
tongue — was  wildly  exaggerated  and  shamelessly 
perverted.  Rockefeller,  he  once  remarked,  was 
as  original  a  genius  in  industrial  combination  as 
Shakespeare  in  the  poetic  drama  —  a  proposition 
that  is  at  least  debatable.  He  was  reported  as 
having  said  that  Rockefeller  was  as  great  a  genius 
as  Shakespeare,  and  the  incident  was  so  twisted 
as  to  give  the  impression  that  the  chief  end  of 
the  university  was  to  glorify  its  founder. 

I  was  told,  and  on  the  best  authority,  that 
Triggs  would  have  lost  his  position  in  the  uni- 
versity much  sooner  if  it  had  not  been  for  such 
persecutions.  Above  everything  President  Har- 
per valued  liberty  of  speech,  and  long  refused  to 
abandon  one  of  his  Faculty  under  fire.  A  simi- 
larly creditable  scruple  prevents  the  expulsion  of 
offending  reporters.  The  Faculty  is  indulgent 

158 


A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

of  self-supporting  students,  and,  when  ques- 
tioned, they  usually  maintain  very  plausibly  that 
the  work  of  falsification  is  done  by  copy  editors 
in  the  newspaper  office. 

In  point  of  fact  the  teaching  of  the  university 
tends  toward  socialism  rather  than  toward  the 
order  which  produced  its  founder.  The  offspring 
of  Yale,  its  primary  ideal  in  instruction  is  thai? 
of  scientific  culture,  as  it  is  pursued  in  our  East^ 
ern  universities.  The  department  of  economics 
happens,  rather  fortunately,  to  be  under  a  man 
of  well-balanced  opinions  ;  but  that  of  sociology 
is  very  advanced. 

Professor  Charles  Zueblin  advocates  experi- 
mental marriages  and  pensioning  mothers  in 
proportion  to  the  size  of  their  families,  propo- 
sitions precisely  in  line  with  the  system  that  in- 
volves free  love  and  the  upbringing  of  children 
by  the  state.  Professor  W.  I.  Thomas  recently 
described  "  the  so-called  sporting  woman "  as 
leading  "what  from  the  psychological  stand- 
point may  be  called  the  normal  life,"  and  said 
that  her  kind  "  make  good  wives  —  uncommonly 
good  wives,  some  of  them,  because  they  have  had 
their  fling."  None  of  these  opinions,  as  far  as  I 

159 


CHICAGO 

know,  have  been  uttered  before  the  students  ;  but 
none  the  less  they  have  caused  alarm  as  the 
opinions  of  those  in  authority  in  a  coeducational 
institution.  Professor  Thomas  is  an  able  and  sci- 
entific sociologist,  though  at  times  an  irrespons- 
ible writer ;  and  when  he  republished  the  article 
in  question  in  his  "  Sex  and  Society  "  he  modified 
it  in  accordance  with  the  unsensational  truth. 
These  incidents  mark  the  extreme  of  their  kind, 
and  are  very  far  indeed  from  indicating  the  ideas 
of  the  university  as  a  whole. 

A  searching  inquiry  convinced  me  that  the 
great  bulk  of  the  teaching  and  the  general  life 
of  the  undergraduates  is  intelligently  conserva- 
tive and  in  all  ways  sound.  It  cannot  be  said  to 
have  any  real  connection  either  with  capitalism  or 
with  socialism.  It  is  the  function  of  a  great  uni- 
versity to  teach,  not  what  to  think,  but  how  to 
think.  Its  spirit  is  that  of  scientific  culture  un- 
hampered by  authority,  —  the  freedom  to  teach 
and  the  freedom  to  learn  without  any  inspiration 
but  the  love  of  truth. 

President  Harper's  plan  was  big,  to  the 
verge  of  grandiosity.  His  university  was  to  be 
complete  and  perfect,  combining  all  the  ideals 

160 


A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

recognized  in  American  education.  Himself  a 
graduate  of  Yale  and  a  professor  there,  when 
called  to  Chicago  he  held  firmly  in  mind  the 
two  principles  of  the  Eastern  university — that  of 
the  liberal  training  of  character,  both  mental  and 
moral,  which  we  have  inherited  from  the  English 
universities ;  and  that  of  pure  scientific  culture, 
which  in  recent  decades  we  have  adapted  from 
the  German.  To  these  was  to  be  added  the  prin- 
ciple of  technical  education  which,  already  re- 
cognized even  at  Yale  and  Harvard,  is  dominant 
in  the  newer  universities  of  the  West. 

If  his  physical  strength  had  been  commensu- 
rate, there  is  no  telling  to  what  heights  he  might 
have  raised  the  institution  during  his  lifetime. 
But  at  the  outset  his  physique  gave  warning  of 
a  breakdown.  The  only  wonder  is  that  he  sur- 
vived his  gigantic  labors  so  long. 

To  the  end,  however,  his  mind  and  will  were 
master.  On  his  death-bed  he  dictated  incessantly 
to  a  stenographer,  bringing  to  such  completion 
as  was  possible  his  labors  as  a  scholar  and  an 
educator.  There  is  something  grimly  terrible 
in  the  composure  with  which  he  met  his  end. 
He  prescribed  in  minute  detail  the  arrangements 

161 


CHICAGO 

for  his  funeral,  even  directing  that  the  watchers 
who  guarded  his  coffin  should  be  served  with 
luncheon  at  midnight. 

In  a  recent  address  before  the  Yale  alumni  of 
Ohio,  President  Hadley  described  the  Western  in- 
stitutions as  local  rather  than  national,  and  lack- 
ing in  "  an  atmosphere  charged  with  tradition." 
The  great  Eastern  institutions  have  expanded 
with  the  nation  from  its  earliest  beginnings, 
year  by  year,  generation  by  generation.  The 
few  Colonists  and  Indians  of  the  seventeenth 
century  have  slowly  grown  to  three  and  four 
thousand  young  men  from  all  corners  of  the  land, 
from  many  nations  widely  scattered  over  the 
globe.  The  earliest  curriculum  of  divinity,  spell- 
ing, and  arithmetic  has  expanded  until  it  includes 
all  modern  arts,  sciences,  and  professions,  each  a 
spontaneous  growth  from  the  soil  of  our  national 
life.  The  sod  is  enriched  with  the  tares  of  old 
harvests,  nourishing  even  in  decay.  The  Univer- 
sity of  Chicago,  on  the  other  hand,  has  sprung 
forth  out  of  nothing,  as  if  by  a  stroke  of  magic. 
And  if  it  has  the  glamour  of  enchantment,  it  has 
also  something  that  seems  as  yet  fantastic  and  of 
questionable  stability.  It  is  a  mingling  of  old  and 

162 


A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

new,  of  native  and  foreign  —  "the  fabric  of  a 
dream  "  that  time  is  only  gradually  proving  not 
to  be  "  baseless." 

Its  location,  a  mere  quarter  of  an  hour  from 
the  heart  of  the  metropolis,  is  likely  to  prove  un- 
favorable to  the  atmosphere  of  liberal  culture. 
The  fate  which  has  overtaken  Columbia  and 
Pennsylvania,  in  spite  of  their  age  and  traditions, 
seems  inevitable.  A  large  proportion  of  the  stu- 
dents live  at  their  homes  in  Chicago  ;  so  large  a 
proportion  that  certain  even  of  the  best  fraterni- 
ties have  had  trouble  in  getting  members  to  live 
in  the  houses.  And  a  larger  proportion  have 
neither  time  nor  ambition  for  anything  more 
than  a  bare  degree.  But  they  do  get  an  experi- 
ence in  the  vital  realities  of  life,  and  with  it  a 
mental  and  moral  training  more  valuable  than 
liberal  culture,  highly  as  that  is  to  be  prized. 

On  the  publication  of  President  Hadley's  re- 
marks the  Chicago  press,  which  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  "  news "  has  never  hesitated  to  traduce 
neighboring  institutions,  spoke  a  few  words  of 
simple  truth  and  sense.  Admitting  their  lack  of 
social  prestige,  and  of  all  the  graces  of  ease  and 
leisure,  it  laid  convincing  emphasis  on  the  intel- 

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CHICAGO 

lectual  seriousness  and  practical  earnestness  of 
Western  universities. 

Certain  of  President  Harper's  innovations 
once  seemed  to  strike  at  the  root  of  the  spirit  of 
American  education,  and  notably  his  "quarter 
system." 

Elsewhere  the  unit  of  residence  and  instruction 
is  a  year  of  eight  or  nine  months,  which  must  be 
satisfactorily  completed  in  order  to  count  for  a 
degree.  During  the  summer  the  entire  plant  lies 
virtually  idle.  Classes  come  and  go  in  phalanx ; 
and  in  class  unity,  it  is  thought,  lies  the  local 
spirit  and  tradition,  the  genius  of  the  place.  At 
Chicago  the  unit  is  a  quarter  of  three  months,  at 
the  end  of  which  every  course  of  instruction  is 
brought  to  a  definite  close ;  and  the  teaching  con- 
tinues throughout  the  year.  For  both  teachers 
and  taught  this  means  a  vast  increase  of  freedom. 
As  elsewhere,  a  normal  year's  work  consists  of 
three  quarters.  But  a  professor  who  so  chooses 
may  teach  six  consecutive  quarters,  and  at  the 
end  of  them  have  an  uninterrupted  vacation  for 
study  or  travel  of  half  a  year.  Or,  if  he  is  will- 
ing to  take  less  pay,  he  may  teach  at  the  rate  of 
only  two  quarters  yearly,  thus  gaining  an  annual 

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A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

vacation  of  six  months,  or  a  biennial  vacation  of 
twelve. 

For  the  students  the  liberty  is  even  greater. 
The  majority  of  them  take  their  degrees  in  the 
usual  manner,  for  four  years'  work  of  three  quar- 
ters each,  omitting  the  summer  quarter,  and  so 
maintain  considerable  class  spirit.  But  a  student 
may,  if  he  chooses  to  work  continuously,  gain  his 
degree  in  three  instead  of  four  years,  or  he  may 
make  any  interval  between  quarters.  Many  stu- 
dents have  left  college  to  teach,  completing  the 
work  for  their  degrees  in  successive  summer 
quarters.  One  spread  his  undergraduate  career 
over  fourteen  years,  not  qualifying  as  bachelor 
of  arts  until  he  was  father  of  a  family. 

In  a  section  as  busy  as  the  Middle  West  there 
is  abundant  use  for  such  an  institution.  The 
sacrifices  often  made  to  get  a  degree  are  little 
short  of  heroic.  Many  students  light  street  lamps, 
tend  furnaces,  wait  on  tables,  wash  dishes.  One 
student,  an  athlete  of  national  reputation,  tutors 
in  his  spare  hours  all  day  and  manages  a  tele- 
phone exchange  until  early  morning. 

The  situation  has  its  dangers.  On  the  one  hand, 
boys  are  tempted  to  strive  for  a  university  educa- 

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tion  whose  abilities  would  be  better  employed  in 
the  manual  arts  and  trades;  while,  on  the  other, 
able  fellows  break  down  under  the  combined 
strains  of  money-making  and  study.  But  it  will 
be  a  sad  day  for  our  democracy  when  it  ceases  to 
be  the  ambition  of  our  youth  to  rise  through 
learning.  According  to  an  estimate  lately  made 
by  Dr.  James  H.  Canfield,  one  per  cent  of 
American  men  are  liberally  educated,  and  these 
hold  forty  per  cent  of  all  positions  of  trust  and 
distinction. 

As  yet  both  time  and  money  have  been  lacking 
to  build  up  the  technical  departments  at  Chicago. 
Industrial  chemistry,  it  is  true,  is  very  ably  taught, 
and  the  departments  of  pure  science  are  among 
the  most  advanced  in  the  country;  but  there 
are  no  schools  of  engineering,  civil,  mechanical, 
electrical,  or  mining;  there  is  no  school  of  archi- 
tecture or  of  agriculture.  The  utilitarian  needs  of 
the  Middle  West  are  in  a  large  measure  already 
supplied,  and  very  well  supplied,  by  the  state  uni- 
versities. Not  only  the  University  of  Wisconsin, 
but  the  University  of  Illinois  at  Champaign,  has 
an  agricultural  and  engineering  department  of  the 
highest  efficiency.  Purdue,  in  Indiana,  has  an 

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A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

admirable  school  of  engineering  with  a  strongly 
"practical"  bent. 

President  Harper's  idea  seems  to  have  been  to 
give  the  West  the  kind  of  education  it  lacked 
rather  than  the  kind  it  wanted.  Yet  there  are 
manifest  difficulties  in  starting  a  new  institution 
against  the  grain,  and  especially  in  face  of  the  tide 
of  Western  youths  of  greater  leisure  which  has 
so  long  been  flowing  east.  Mr.  Rockefeller's  latest 
gift  has  been  spent  for  the  technical  schools. 

Original  as  was  President  Harper's  scheme  in 
certain  details,  it  is  prevailingly  imitative,  even 
assimilative.  At  the  outset  a  complete  prospectus 
of  the  university  as  a  whole,  worked  out  in  the 
minutest  detail,  was  sent  for  criticism  to  over 
fifty  American  institutions,  with  a  view  to  coming 
in  touch  with  all  the  latest  and  most  progressive 
developments  in  education.  In  every  case  in  which 
an  older  university  had  made  itself  preeminent  in 
the  teaching  of  a  particular  subject,  its  system  and 
organization  were  reproduced.  Thus  the  Harvard 
department  of  English  was  exactly  copied,  and 
placed  in  the  hands  of  a  group  of  its  most  bril- 
liant young  graduates. 

The  schools  of  the  learned  professions  have 
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advanced  slowly,  but  with  the  same  minutenes 
and  breadth  of  purpose.  The  Law  School  is  a 
replica  of  that  at  Harvard :  it  teaches  by  the  case 
system,  and  is  in  charge  of  a  distinguished  pro- 
fessor of  law  from  Cambridge. 

In  his  plans  for  the  Medical  School,  President 
Harper's  eclecticism  reached  a  climax.  Over  on 
the  West  Side  of  Chicago  is  the  Rush  Medical 
College,  one  of  the  largest  and  ablest  in  the  coun- 
try —  obviously  ripe  for  benevolent  assimilation. 
There  are  human  difficulties  in  the  way  of  such 
a  plan,  as  Harvard  has  found  in  the  course  of 
its  efforts  to  incorporate  the  Massachusetts  Insti- 
tute of  Technology.  As  yet  Rush  is  no  more 
than  benevolently  affiliated.  The  first  two  years 
of  the  university  course  in  medicine  are  pursued 
in  the  admirable  scientific  laboratories  on  the 
Midway,  after  which  the  classes  migrate  to  the 
elder  institution. 

The  Divinity  School,  like  the  university  as  a 
whole,  is  nominally  Baptist,  and  its  head  is  a 
Baptist,  as  are  the  president  and  a  majority  of  the 
board  of  trustees.  But  in  practice  this  university 
is  scarcely  more. Baptist  than  Harvard  is  Unita- 
rian or  Yale  Congregational.  The  Faculty  of  the 

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A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

Divinity  School  is  so  criti'cal  and  scientific  as  to 
be  a  source  of  local  amusement  —  or  scandal. 

It  is  in  the  graduate  school  that  the  university 
has  made  its  strongest  mark.  At  the  outset  lead- 
ing professors  in  all  subjects  were  induced  by 
the  magnificence  of  the  new  foundation  and  by 
liberal  salaries  to  migrate  to  the  new  institution. 
Few,  even  of  our  oldest  universities,  excelled  Chi- 
cago, either  in  the  number  and  variety  of  sub- 
jects taught  or  in  the  ability  and  reputation  of 
the  men  teaching  them.  The  university  library, 
containing  367,442  volumes  and  1287  current 
periodicals,  is  one  of  the  three  or  four  largest 
in  the  country.  Laboratories  and  museums  are 
equally  strong.  The  students  in  the  graduate 
school  reached,  in  1906-07,  the  extraordinary 
number  of  1121.  The  university  issues  twelve 
periodicals  recording  original  advances  in  science 
and  philology,  several  of  which  are  of  world-wide 
reputation. 

The  new  president  of  the  university,  Harry 
Pratt  Judson,  is  an  older  man  than  his  predeces- 
sor—  older  in  temperament  as  in  years.  Doctor 
Harper's  chief  failing,  and  especially  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  founder,  was  the  sanguine 

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largeness  of  his  undertaking  and  the  lavishness 
of  his  expenditures.  Under  Doctor  Judson  the 
institution  has  for  the  first  time  become  approxi- 
mately self-supporting  on  the  basis  of  its  endow- 
ment. For  the  present  the  work  of  expansion 
proceeds  slowly.  The  main  effort  is  to  perfect 
the  departments  already  in  being  by  an  increase 
in  equipment  and  in  funds  available  for  teaching. 
Yet  the  original  aim  of  completeness  is  held 
firmly  in  view. 

President  Harper's  "  immense  forethoughtful- 
ness"  is  nowhere  more  clearly  evident  than  in 
his  plans  for  the  residential  and  social  life  of  the 
students.  The  apparent  failure  of  the  Eastern 
type  of  university  to  make  the  local  atmosphere 
and  traditions  permeate  the  student  body  as  a 
whole  must  have  been  obvious  to  him;  and  he 
had,  besides,  to  counteract  a  new  set  of  forces 
tending  to  render  undergraduate  life  uncompan- 
ionable and  unhomelike  —  the  distractions  of  the 
city  and  the  absorbing  earnestness  of  the  students, 
the  disintegrating  influences  of  the  quarter  sys- 
tem, and  the  large  proportion  of  graduate  stu- 
dents. The  scheme  he  hit  on  to  give  character 
and  tone  to  the  student  body  was  identical  with 

170 


A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

that  projected  at  Harvard,  Princeton,  Cornell, 
and,  as  we  shall  see,  at  the  University  of  Wiscon- 
sin :  the  residential  hall. 

Chicago  is  the  first  of  these  universities  to 
make  any  actual  progress  in  the  matter.  Three 
of  the  community  organizations,  one  for  men  and 
two  for  women,  are  mere  clubs  of  students  resid- 
ing off  the  campus  or  even  in  the  city,  and  have 
no  home  except  a  clubroom  appointed  by  the 
Faculty  in  one  of  the  university  buildings.  Nine 
of  them,  five  for  men  and  four  for  women,  have 
separate  residential  buildings  on  the  campus,  built 
like  the  traditional  dormitories  at  Yale  and  Har- 
vard. Each  of  these  has  as  its  head  a  member  of 
the  Faculty  appointed  by  the  president,  and  is 
subject  to  certain  general  university  statutes ; 
but  each  elects  its  own  house  committee  and 
other  officers,  and  is  virtually  self-governing. 
None  of  them  has  a  separate  dining-hall.  The 
students  take  their  meals  in  two  large  halls,  one 
for  each  sex. 

The  women's  halls  are  open  to  any  student, 
appointments  being  made  by  the  registrar.  For 
three  months  the  newcomer  lives  on  probation  as 
a  guest,  and  cannot  become  a  member  except  by 

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election  of  the  community.  All  the  halls  have  a 
common  room  or  parlor  for  general  use,  recep- 
tions and  dances,  in  which  freshmen,  upperclass- 
men,  and  graduates  meet,  to  the  manifest  advan- 
tage of  all. 

The  farthest  advanced  of  the  men's  halls  is 
Hitchcock,  a  very  beautiful  and  richly-furnished 
building,  divided  into  five  sections  or  entries 
connected  outside  by  a  beautiful  Gothic  cor- 
ridor. The  entry  nearest  the  athletic  field  is  given 
over  to  the  athletic  teams  in  the  training  sea- 
son, an  arrangement  which  should  prove  fruitful 
in  developing  precisely  that  esprit  de  corps 
which  a  city  university  is  pitifully  prone  to 
lack.  The  entry  at  the  other  end  has  a  hall 
library  and  a  lounging-room  in  which  breakfast 
is  served. 

It  is  the  conscious  purpose  of  the  authorities, 
as  soon  as  may  be,  to  make  the  hall  of  limited 
size,  with  individual  common  rooms  and  dining- 
rooms,  the  normal  centre  of  undergraduate  life. 
Such  a  plan,  as  I  have  repeatedly  indicated,  is 
inevitable  if  the  American  university  is  to  make 
its  spirit  and  traditions  permeate  the  entire  body 
of  students.  But  this  university  has,  as  it  seems 

172 


A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

to  me,  failed  to  conceive  the  residential  hall  in 
its  logically  perfect  form.  The  organizations  in- 
dividually are  small;  the  English  universities 
have  found  that  the  number  most  favorable  to 
social  and  athletic  life  is  somewhere  between  one 
hundred  and  seventy-five  and  two  hundred  and 
twenty-five.  And  it  is  probable  that  a  hall  the 
life  of  which  centres  in  a  closed  quadrangle  is 
more  likely  than  a  dormitory  hall  to  develop 
individuality  of  character  and  compactness.  But 
for  the  quadrangular  hall  the  university  has  not 
enough  land. 

Fraternity  and  club  life  also  bear  the  stamp  of 
President  Harper's  mind.  It  was  his  purpose  to 
build  each  chapter  a  house  on  the  campus  and 
rent  it  at  a  minimum  price;  but  the  undergradu- 
ates proved  untractable.  It  is  said  that  they 
objected  to  being  herded  together  on  a  basis  of 
seeming  equality —  and  here  again  we  come 
upon  the  curious  lack  of  democracy  in  fraternity 
life.  They  are,  however,  administered  as  halls 
and  subject  to  the  general  rules  for  halls  —  an 
arrangement  that  is  said  to  have  lessened  the 
disorder  often  incident  to  the  fraternity  system. 
There  are  fourteen  undergraduate,  five  medical, 

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CHICAGO 

and  three  law  chapters,  with  an  average  member- 
ship of  something  over  twenty. 

To  represent  the  student  body  as  a  whole,  Pre- 
sident Harper  devised  a  junior  council  for  the 
two  lower  classes  and  a  senior  council  for  the  two 
upper.  The  elections  to  the  councils  are  free 
from  machine  politics,  and  the  membership  in 
consequence  very  representative.  They  manage 
such  matters  of  general  interest  as  the  junior 
promenade.  A  characteristic  example  of  their 
activity  occurred  lately,  when  they  protested 
against  the  prices  at  the  university  bookstore. 

Each  class  has  its  society,  made  up  mainly  of 
fraternity  men,  though  there  are  usually  two  or 
three  independents.  The  senior  society,  the  Owl 
and  Snake,  like  similar  societies  at  other  frater- 
nity universities,  such  as  Michigan  and  Cornell, 
corresponds  closely  in  its  functions  to  the  senior 
societies  at  Yale.  Its  membership  is  chosen 
strictly  on  the  basis  of  prominence  in  the  leading 
undergraduate  activities.  Its  gatherings  are  so 
secret  that  it  is  not  generally  known  where  it 
meets,  or  whether  it  has  a  house  of  its  own.  Its 
influence  is  said  to  be  strong  and  well  directed. 
There  are  other  undergraduate  societies,  as,  for 

174 


A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

example,  the  Black  Friars,  who  give  a  college 
play  every  year. 

To  supplement  the  exclusive  organizations  — 
halls  and  fraternities  and  societies  —  there  is  the 
Reynolds  Club,  which  is  open  to  all  students  of 
the  university.  Its  function  is  that  of  the  Har- 
vard Union,  which  in  turn  was  modeled  on  the 
celebrated  Oxford  Union,  with  the  exception  that 
it  does  not  hold  debates  —  a  feature  which  has 
fallen  into  subordinate  position  in  its  prototypes. 
It  has  bowling-alleys  and  billiard-tables,  a  library 
and  periodical  room,  and  very  beautiful  rooms  in 
which  it  holds  monthly  dances.  Thus  even  those 
students  without  special  affiliations  are  afforded 
a  point  of  contact  with  the  undergraduate  life. 

Socially  as  educationally,  in  short,  the  Univer- 
sity of  Chicago  has  projected,  and  in  a  consider- 
able measure  realized,  an  ideal  type  of  the  Amer- 
ican university,  and  the  only  type,  as  far  as  I  can 
see,  which  will  ever  be  able  to  restore  it  to  its 
original  and  normal  character  as  a  school  for 
manners  and  morals  as  well  as  for  the  mind.  It 
has  done  this  in  spite  of  its  unfortunate  situation 
near  the  city,  and  in  the  face  of  no  little  opposi- 
tion from  the  very  element  they  are  seeking  to 

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CHICAGO 

benefit.  The  undergraduates  used  to  sing  a  deri- 
sive song,  "  The  Profs  Make  Student  Customs  at 
the  U!"  But,  in  the  end,  it  will  be  able  to  say 
that  every  student  finds  the  way  open  to  an  asso- 
ciation with  the  body  of  undergraduate  life  which 
is  calculated  to  bring  him  normally  and  easily 
under  the  influence  of  its  traditions. 

What  these  traditions  now  are  an  outsider  can 
only  imperfectly  surmise.  One  thing  seems  rea- 
sonably certain :  they  are  strenuous  to  the  point 
of  exuberance.  It  is  not  only  the  "Profs"  who 
have  been  busy  in  making  student  customs. 

A  graduate,  whose  undergraduate  life  saw  the 
birth  of  the  institution,  told  me  that  the  fellows 
were  singing  a  sentimental  college  song  about 
Old  Haskell,  of  the  type  of  Old  Nassau,  before 
the  varnish  on  the  door  was  dry.  The  composer 
of  the  first  undergraduate  burlesque,  now  a  pro- 
fessor in  the  English  department,  related  that  the 
show  set  a  high  example  of  "spontaneity."  His 
best  topical  song,  which  had  the  refrain,  "  Girl 
Wanted !  "  was  producing  less  than  its  due  effect, 
so  at  the  end  of  a  stanza  a  member  of  the  com- 
pany whooped  things  up  by  smashing  the  glass 
in  one  of  the  doors,  which  almost  stampeded  the 

176 


A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

audience.  Those  were  the  good  old  days.  There 
is  no  such  spontaneity  nowadays,  the  librettist 
lamented. 

To  the  superficial  Eastern  view  the  West  is 
wild  and  woolly,  just  as  to  the  Western  mind  the 
East  is  lackadaisical  and  snobbish.  But  there  is 
no  virtue  without  its  compensating  defect,  no 
defect  without  its  virtue.  The  qualities  of  the 
Chicago  undergraduate  are  democratic  good  hu- 
mor and  efficiency. 

A  fraternity  house  at  which  a  graduate  had 
invited  me  to  dine  proved  to  be  without  a  cook. 
For  several  days  things  had  been  up  to  the  stu- 
dent steward,  whose  name,  it  appeared,  was  Bill. 
At  the  outset  Bill  spilled  the  entire  pepper-box 
into  the  soup,  with  the  result  that  certain  finicky 
graduates  turned  up  their  noses  and  sneezed  at 
his  stewardship.  But  the  dinner  as  a  whole  was 
edible.  At  the  freshman  table  it  even  inspired  the 
exuberant  singing  of  the  fraternity  song.  Taken 
for  all  in  all,  this  makeshift  meal  was  far  better 
than  many  I  have  eaten  in  Memorial  Hall,  and 
cost  the  students  less.  And  it  went  off  with  a 
gusto  of  comradeship  beyond  the  power  of  any 
high-salaried  chef  to  inspire. 

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CHICAGO 

The  life  of  the  women,  I  was  told,  is  of  a  higher 
social  quality  than  that  of  the  men,  and  higher 
than  that  of  the  women  in  most  other  coeduca- 
tional institutions.  Most  young  Chicago  men 
of  leisure  and  means  still  go  East  to  college, 
while  the  women  of  state  universities  are  mostly 
from  local  rural  communities.  The  high  standard 
of  instruction  at  Chicago  in  polite  learning  at- 
tracts young  women  of  the  best  traditions  in  the 
city,  and  to  some  extent  from  the  entire  West  and 
South.  Chicago  was  fortunate,  moreover,  in  hav- 
ing for  its  first  Dean  of  Women  Alice  Freeman 
Palmer,  whose  large  and  dignified  ideal,  "the 
union  of  learning  with  the  fine  art  of  living," 
gave  permanent  character  to  the  women's  halls. 

It  is  the  settled  policy  of  the  authorities  to 
lessen  the  mingling  of  the  sexes  both  socially  and 
in  the  classroom  —  in  President  Harper's  phrase, 
to  segregate  them.  As  in  most  universities,  coedu- 
cation had  its  origin  in  an  economic  necessity ; 
it  increased  the  number  of  students  and  avoided 
duplicating  the  instruction. 

As  the  funds  of  the  university  permit,  the  sexes 
are  to  be  separated,  and  especially  in  the  earlier 
years.  Theoretically  there  is  much  to  be  said  for 

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A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

comradeship  between  youths  and  maidens ;  but, 
practically,  it  is  said  at  Chicago  to  have  worked 
ill  in  both  directions.  On  one  hand  it  forces  the 
Faculty  to  exert  its  influence  against  undergrad- 
uate engagements,  and  on  the  other  it  encourages 
bachelorhood.  One  unmarried  graduate  relates 
that  he  had  deep  tribulations  while  in  college  in 
the  effort  to  make  his  fraternity  pay  its  coal  bills 
before  giving  dances.  Another,  also  unmarried, 
alleges  that  he  lost  the  illusion  necessary  to  mat- 
rimony by  crawling  into  a  sweater  for  an  early 
lecture  and  seeing  the  girls  with  whom  he  had 
romantically  danced  into  the  small  hours  of  the 
night  before,  heavy-eyed  and  hastily  dressed. 

President  Harper  had  all  a  Yale  man's  love  of 
athletic  victory,  and  a  shrewd  sense  of  its  value 
in  attracting  students.  At  the  great  games  a 
prominent  box  was  always  reserved  for  him,  and 
usually  another  beside  it  in  which  he  managed  to 
land  the  most  distinguished  personalities  of  the 
hour.  Long  after  he  was  too  ill  to  sit  in  the  open, 
he  witnessed  contests  from  a  window  in  the  gym- 
nasium overlooking  the  athletic  field. 

In  A.  Alonzo  Stagg,  double  hero  of  the  base- 
ball and  football  fields  as  a  Yale  undergraduate, 

179 


CHICAGO 

and  later  a  paid  coach,  President  Harper  found 
a  general  of  consummate  craft.  With  an  eleven 
of  slender  Y.  M.  C.  A.  men  he  once  scored  against 
his  alma  mater;  and  he  has  been  no  less  successful 
with  the  sparse  material  of  this  new  city  uni- 
versity. A  few  years  ago  he  had  the  problem  of 
meeting  an  eleven  from  Michigan  which  even  he 
regarded  as  unconquerable.  He  trained  his  team 
to  play  a  defensive  game  only,  in  the  hope  of 
pulling  off  a  tie  at  nothing  to  nothing.  His  men 
checked  their  mighty  opponents  in  every  one  of 
their  repertory  of  plays,  and  by  the  most  fortu- 
nate of  accidents  succeeded  in  forcing  the  full- 
back to  a  safety,  so  that  they  won  by  the  score  of 
two  to  nothing.  Yale  luck  has  become  Chicago 
luck,  being  spelled  in  both  places  with  a  p  before  it. 
In  the  East  there  was  much  discussion  over  the 
fact  that  Stagg,  though  by  virtue  of  his  office 
a  professional,  once  played  on  the  Chicago  eleven 
—  which  made  not  only  his  own  team,  but  those 
who  played  against  it,  technically  professionals. 
The  answer  of  the  West  is  characteristic.  With- 
out him  the  team  of  the  new  university  would 
have  been  too  weak  to  deserve  to  meet  its  rivals, 
which  was  why  no  objection  was  made.  The  in- 

180 


A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

cident  happened  in  the  fall  of  1892,  and  has  long 
been  forgotten. 

The  question  of  importing  paid  athletes  is, 
however,  a  live  wire,  to  be  handled  with  care. 
The  East  has  had  its  periods  of  iniquity,  and  is 
even  now  none  too  virtuous.  The  West,  with  its 
lack  of  athletic  standards  and  traditions,  and  its 
exuberant  delight  in  success,  was  ripe  for  all  evil 
influences.  At  the  great  universities,  it  is  said, 
promising  material  was,  until  lately,  eagerly  com- 
peted for  and  liberally  paid.  In  many  univer- 
sities members  of  the  faculties  connived  at  the 
traffic,  and  even  assisted  in  it;  but  I  have  every 
reason  to  think  that,  contrary  to  the  general  be- 
lief, the  Faculty  of  the  University  of  Chicago  in 
general,  and  Stagg  in  particular,  kept  their  skirts 
uncommonly  clean.  When  athletes  were  imported 
it  was  by  irresponsible  graduates. 

To-day  the  checks  against  professionalism  are 
not  less  rigid  in  the  West  than  in  the  East.  No  man 
is  allowed  to  compete  until  he  has  been  in  good 
standing  an  entire  year,  and  he  cannot  compete 
more  than  three  years  all  told.  For  the  present, 
athletics  in  the  West  are  pure. 

Stagg' s  position  is  far  different  from  that  of 
181 


CHICAGO 

the  paid  coach,  or  even  of  the  one-man  instructor 
in  athletics.  Physical  culture  is  a  part  of  the 
curriculum.  The  student  may  choose  whatever 
exercise  he  likes  and  is  fitted  for,  but  he  must 
take  ten  "  majors  "  of  some  sort,  or  he  does  not 
qualify  for  his  degree.  The  ideal  of  the  university, 
which  Stagg  has  repeatedly  voiced,  is  that  no 
man  shall  graduate  who  has  not  learned  to  do  at 
least  some  one  thing  for  the  health  of  his  body. 
Here  again  forethought  has  done  what  it  can  to 
correct  the  tendencies  natural  to  a  city  university. 
The  most  wholesome  form  of  athletic  compe- 
tition, it  is  generally  conceded,  is  that  between 
rival  factions  within  the  university,  in  that  it  en- 
gages the  largest  number  of  men  in  the  form  of 
sport  most  highly  colored  by  generous  rivalry 
and  least  likely  to  lead  to  notoriety  and  animosity. 
It  is  here  that  the  English  universities,  with  their 
twenty  distinct  colleges,  have  their  most  enviable 
advantage.  If  ever  the  Chicago  halls  develop  in 
sufficient  size  and  number,  all  the  essential  features 
of  the  English  system  will  obtain.  Already  an  in- 
telligent effort  has  been  made  in  this  direction. 
The  university  is  divided  for  athletic  purposes  on 
the  basis  of  the  Schools  of  Science,  Arts,  Phi- 

182 


A  UNIVERSITY  BY  ENCHANTMENT 

losophy,  etc.  It  is  to  the  development  of  active 
home  contests,  and  not  to  arbitrary  abolishments, 
which  they  have  often  attempted  in  vain,  that 
the  Faculty  may  look  in  the  hope  to  minimize 
the  evil  effects  of  the  great  games. 

Architecturally,  the  recent  and  wholesale  ori- 
gin of  the  university  has  been  fortunate.  What 
is  bad  in  institutions  sooner  or  later  perishes,  but 
bad  buildings  are  a  permanent  offense.  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  through  all  the  period 
of  their  greatest  expansion  the  architecture  of  the 
Eastern  universities  has  been  monstrous.  Harvard 
and  Yale  suffer  from  what  Charles  Eliot  Norton 
used  to  call  the  plague  of  Romanesque.  And  there 
is  that  worse  plague  of  pseudo-Gothic.  It  was  not 
until  the  era  of  the  University  of  Chicago  that 
we  discovered  the  true  style  of  academic  archi- 
tecture—  genuine  residential  Gothic.  And  Chi- 
cago had  the  further  advantage  of  being  able 
to  plan  a  university  as  a  uniform  and  consistent 
architectural  whole.  The  site  is  flat  and  the 
buildings  are  of  necessity  somewhat  crowded; 
but  the  latest  acquisitions  of  land  have  been 
shrewdly  made  on  the  farther  side  of  the  Mid- 
way, thus  virtually  incorporating  into  the  site 

183 


CHICAGO 

of  the  university  a  pleasance  six  hundred  feet 
wide. 

The  most  recently  erected  buildings  are  posi- 
tively and  memorably  beautiful.  They  are  copies 
or  close  imitations  of  masterpieces  of  the  English 
universities  made  by  Mr.  Coolidge  of  the  Boston 
firm  of  Shepley,  Rutan  and  Coolidge.  The  Law 
School  has  of  necessity  wandered  rather  far  from 
the  chapel  of  Trinity,  Cambridge.  Mitchell  tower, 
to  a  layman's  eye,  at  least,  though  simple  and 
forcible,  lacks  the  refinement  and  the  spirituality 
of  the  tower  of  Magdalen,  Oxford.  But  the  din- 
ing-hall  is  a  faithful  copy  of  that  of  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  while  the  interior  of  Reynolds 
Club  is  an  original  creation  of  astonishing  rich- 
ness and  beauty. 


VI 
WISCONSIN: 

A  UTILITARIAN  UNIVERSITY 

ASTERN  educators  were  surprised,  four 
years  ago,  when  a  member  of  the  British 
Parliament,  who  had  come  to  this  country  on  the 
Moseley  educational  commission,  the  Honorable 
William  Henry  Jones,  placed  the  University  of 
Wisconsin  in  a  list  of  our  five  leading  institu- 
tions of  learning,  and  excluded  from  the  list  Yale, 
Princeton,  Columbia,  Pennsylvania,  and  Johns 
Hopkins.  Surprise  changed  to  skepticism  when 
he  proceeded  to  state  his  opinion  that  Wisconsin 
stood  above  even  the  four  other  institutions  which 
he  named  as  of  the  first  order,  Harvard,  Cornell, 
Michigan,  and  California  —  being,  in  fact,  the 
foremost  university  of  the  land. 

Many  of  the  reasons  he  gave  for  this  opinion 
were  vague  and  unconvincing.  Wisconsin  is  not 
strong  in  graduate  study ;  it  has  no  schools  of 
architecture,  medicine,  or  theology.  But  he  was 

185 


WISCONSIN 

on  firm  ground  when  he  said :  u  The  University 
of  Wisconsin  is  a  wholesome  product  of  a  com- 
monwealth of  three  millions  of  people ;  sane,  in- 
dustrial, and  progressive.  It  knits  together  the 
professions  and  labors  ;  it  makes  the  fine  arts  and 
the  anvil  one."  This  judgment  touches  the  bed- 
rock of  fact  —  highly  characteristic  fact. 

The  older  institutions  of  the  East  are  the  pro- 
duct of  two  distinct  currents  of  university  tradi- 
tion. Upon  the  ideal  of  liberal  education,  train- 
ing in  mind  and  in  morals,  they  superimposed  that 
of  original  research.  Their  watchword  is  twofold 
—  character  and  truth. 

The  state  universities  of  the  West  lay  chief 
stress  upon  immediate  practical  results  —  the 
technique  of  industry.  Foremost  in  devotion  to 
this  ideal  is  Wisconsin.  Its  watchword  is  utility. 
As  President  Van  Hise  has  frequently  expressed 
it,  its  aim  is  to  make  the  university  the  instru- 
ment of  the  state.  It  is  in  this  respect  that  Wis- 
consin ranks  first  among  American  institutions. 

That  it  does  so  is  the  result  of  historical  circum- 
stances, which  until  recent  years  worked  blindly, 
and,  as  even  the  university  itself  thought,  most 
unfortunately.  It  was  a  case  of  graft  in  lands. 

186 


A   UTILITARIAN   UNIVERSITY 

By  a  wise  provision  of  the  Federal  Government, 
tracts  were  apportioned  throughout  the  West 
at  the  organization  of  the  various  states  for 
the  endowment  of  state  universities ;  and  these 
grants  were  supplemented  by  the  Morrill  Act  of 
1862,  which  set  aside  lands,  proportionate  to  the 
representation  of  each  state  in  the  Union,  for 
the  endowment  of  colleges  teaching  agriculture 
and  the  industrial  arts.  The  trust  was  a  noble 
one,  and  Wisconsin  proved  faithless  to  it. 

It  was  an  agricultural  community.  In  the  minds 
of  the  rustic  fathers,  education  was  a  wasteful 
luxury.  The  great  need  of  the  commonwealth, 
they  thought,  was  population.  The  legislature 
sold  the  lands  of  both  grants  at  less  than  one 
half  their  market  value  at  that  time,  for  the  al- 
leged purpose  of  attracting  settlers.  The  case 
was  similar  in  most  of  the  states  of  the  Old 
Northwest.  Michigan  proved  an  honorable  excep- 
tion, husbanding  her  grants  with  wise  foresight, 
and  thereby  winning  primacy  among  the  state 
universities,  both  in  wealth  and  in  numbers.  In 
the  New  Northwest  several  states,  notably  Wash- 
ington and  Idaho,  have  profited  by  her  example. 
A  single  instance  will  illustrate  how  costly  Wis- 

187 


WISCONSIN 

.consin's  course  proved.  From  the  Morrill  granl 
Cornell,  thanks  to  the  energy  and  foresight 
the  founder,  now  receives  an  annual  income  oi 
three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars ; 
consin  receives  twelve  thousand  dollars. 

The  folly  of  the  Wisconsin  fathers  did  nol 
stop  here.  It  had  been  the  wise  intention  of  th< 
Federal  Government  that  the 'lands  should  be  an 
endowment  in  perpetuity  for  the  maintenance 
and  development  of  the  university,  the  states 
themselves  supplying  such  funds  as  were  neces- 
sary for  buildings;  but  Wisconsin  obliged  its 
university  to  spend  its  endowment  for  buildings, 
reducing  its  income  to  a  bagatelle.  Eetarded  and 
enfeebled,  the  institution  barely  escaped  confis- 
cation. A  movement  to  disband  it  and  apply  its 
funds  to  local  sectarian  colleges  failed  by  the  nar- 
rowest margin.  Of  all  the  great  state  univer- 
sities, Wisconsin  is  still  the  poorest  in  independ- 
ent income. 

What  so  narrowly  missed  being  its  destruction 
has  proved  the  source  of  its  present  distinction. 
Living  on  the  bounty  of  the  state  legislature, 
it  early  learned  the  policy  of  producing  results 
of  such  immediate  utility  as  were  most  likely  to 

188 


A   UTILITARIAN   UNIVERSITY 

impress  the  rural  mind.  In  the  phrase  of  a  local 
satirist,  its  ideal  became,  not  culture,  but  agri- 
culture.1 

Its  first  great  achievement  was  a  milk  test,  in- 
vented by  Professor  Stephen  M.  Babcock,  of  the 
Agricultural  School.  Together  with  the  method 
of  instantly  separating  the  cream  from  each  day's 
yield  by  means  of  centrifugal  force,  invented  by 
Dr.  De  Laval,  of  Sweden,  the  Babcock  test  forms 
the  basis  of  the  immense  cooperative  industry  of 
modern  dairying.  It  was  estimated  in  1900  that 
it  saved  the  cheese  factories,  dairymen,  and  farm- 
ers of  Wisconsin  alone  eight  hundred  thousand 
dollars  a  year,  or  twice  the  current  expenses  of 
the  university  for  all  departments ;  and  it  is  of 
proportionate  value  to  every  state  of  the  Union, 
to  every  agricultural  country  of  the  world,  from 
Switzerland  to  Australia. 

Other  departments  of  the  university,  though 
they  have  been  less  successful  in  adding  to  the 
wealth  of  the  state,  are  inspired  by  the  same 
aim.  The  Engineering  School  has  invented  a 
method  of  thawing  frozen  pipes  without  digging 

1  The  work  of  the  schools  of  agriculture,  at  Wisconsin  and 
elsewhere,  is  described  at  length  in  the  following  chapter. 

189 


WISCONSIN 

them  up,  and  a  method  of  producing  absolutely 
pure  iron  by  electrolysis.  When  the  new  hydraulic 
laboratory  was  installed,  it  turned  its  attention  to 
the  problem  of  pumping  the  water  which  is  de- 
stroying the  value  of  the  lead  and  zinc  mines  of  the 
southwestern  portion  of  the  state.  In  imitation  of 
the  agricultural "  short  courses  "  held  by  many  col- 
leges of  agriculture  during  the  Christmas  vaca- 
tion, for  farmers  and  their  wives,  the  Wisconsin 
School  of  Engineering  has  instituted  a  midsummer 
course  for  artisans  and  apprentices,  designed  to 
teach  them  the  rudiments  of  the  science  of  engi- 
neering. The  instruction  has  been  eagerly  sought 
and  pursued. 

Though  the  university  has  no  medical  school, 
it  is  busy  with  the  problem  of  eradicating  un- 
wholesome conditions,  and  hopes  within  a  decade 
virtually  to  eliminate  such  infectious  diseases  as 
whooping-cough,  measles,  diphtheria,  scarlet  fever, 
and  typhoid  fever,  and  to  make  great  headway 
even  against  tuberculosis.  Unable  to  provide 
clinics  for  the  education  of  doctors,  owing  to  its 
situation  in  a  small  city,  it  is  putting  the  pro- 
fession out  of  business  by  diminishing  the  crop 
of  disease. 

190 


A   UTILITARIAN  UNIVERSITY 

In  a  not  dissimilar  manner,  the  Faculty,  owing 
to  the  situation  of  the  university  in  the  state 
capital,  is  able  to  render  valuable  practical  assist- 
ance to  the  legislators.  Thus  the  committee  at 
present  framing  a  public  utilities  bill  has  en- 
listed Professor  John  R.  Commons  to  advise  it  as 
to  the  economic  wisdom  of  proposed  measures, 
and  Professor  E.  A.  Gilman  to  pass  on  their  con- 
stitutionality. No  less  than  ten  members  of  the 
Faculty  serve  on  state  commissions,  ranging 
from  livestock  sanitation  to  the  taxation  of  the 
railways,  real  estate,  and  mortgages.  Professor 
McCarthy  has  organized  a  library  bureau  for  the 
legislators,  the  purpose  of  which  is  to  put  them 
in  touch  with  the  books  that  throw  light  on  any 
subject  they  may  happen  to  have  to  deal  with. 
In  several  cases  the  requisite  information  has 
been  collected  by  students  of  economics  and  so- 
ciology, so  that  even  the  undergraduates  have 
taken  a  hand  ,in  the  practical  work  of  law- 
making. 

The  methods  pursued  in  order  to  impress  the 
agricultural  legislator  are  sometimes  strange 
enough,  from  the  point  of  view  of  educators  of 
the  liberal  and  purely  scientific  type.  In  his  latest 

191 


WISCONSIN 

biennial  report,  President  Van  Hise  devotes  a 
page  and  more  to  proving  that  professors  engaged 
in  writing  books  about  their  original  investiga- 
tion are  not  mere  idlers  wasting  the  funds  of  the 
state,  but  a  valuable  type  of  teacher.  The  report 
of  the  Dean  of  the  College  of  Agriculture  is 
enthusiastic  over  the  discovery  within  the  state 
of  what  he  calls  "the  world's  record  cow/'  a 
bovine  that  produces  yearly  almost  her  own 
weight  in  butter ;  and  on  the  next  page  promises 
the  solution  of  "  the  all-absorbing  question  of  the 
American  farmer"  by  the  invention  of  a  machine 
for  milking  cows. 

A  prominent  Eastern  educator,  famed  for  suc- 
cess in  soliciting  bequests,  lately  asked  President 
Van  Hise  if  he  did  not  find  it  personally  deroga- 
tory to  be  dependent  for  funds  upon  Sdlons  from 
the  farm.  His  answer  —  in  effect,  though  not  in 
precisely  these  words  —  was  that  tastes  might 
differ,  but  he  would  rather  hang  by  the  whiskers 
of  honest  farmers  than  by  the  coat-tails  of  the 
predatory  plutocrat. 

This,  at  least,  can  be  said:  that  he  and  his 
immediate  predecessor  have  met  a  practical  situ- 
ation with  statesman-like  wisdom  and  resource, 

192 


A  UTILITARIAN   UNIVERSITY 

and  by  so  doing  have  evolved  a  great  institution 
of  a  type  as  serviceable  as  it  is  new. 

Whether  Wisconsin  is  the  leading  American^ 
university  may  be  questioned;  but  it  seems  fairly 
certain  that  it  is  the  one  most  immediately  in 
touch  with  the  spirit  and  needs  of  our  time.  It 
used  to  be  our  patronizing  custom  to  call  the 
Japanese  the  Yankees  of  the  East.  The  success 
which  Wisconsin  has  met  in  adapting  education 
to  ends  of  immediate  utility  fairly  entitles  it  to 
be  called  the  Japan  of  the  West ;  and  it  has  gone 
a  step  beyond  the  island  kingdom,  for  many  of 
its  advances  have  been  the  result  of  its  own  origi- 
nal experiments. 

The  College  of  Letters  and  Science,  granting 
the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts,  is,  as  at  Michi- 
gan and  other  state  institutions,  the  oldest  depart- 
ment of  the  university ;  that  is  why  the  institu- 
tions met  so  much  opposition  from  local  colleges. 
And  it  is  strong  in  numbers,  its  courses  being 
well  attended,  especially  by  young  women.  It 
also,  however,  has  a  strongly  utilitarian  basis. 
Leading  Eastern  universities,  notably  Harvard, 
require  four  years  of  general  study,  or  its 
equivalent,  before  beginning  the  study  of  the 

193 


WISCONSIN 

learned  professions,  though  they  encourage  the 
student  to  elect  such  courses  as  bear  on  his 
chosen  profession,  especially  in  the  senior  year. 
In  order  to  reach  a  recently-fixed  standard, 
moreover,  American  universities  have  to  require 
at  least  two  years  of  general  study  before  taking 
up  a  learned  profession.  Wisconsin  still  receives 
students  into  the  Law  School  direct  from  the 
academy  or  high  school,  and  from  pupils  of  ac- 
credited schools  it  requires  no  examination.  And 
students  in  tha  college  are  supposed  to  choose 
their  studies  with  a  view  to  their  professions 
after  the  sophomore  year. 

A  man  who  intends  to  enter  the  ministry  elects 
as  his  "  major  "  subject  Hebrew  and  Hellenistic 
Greek,  and  is  encouraged  to  supplement  this  with 
social  science  or  some  of  the  other  courses  that 
anticipate  the  work  of  the  theological  seminary. 
The  intending  lawyer  concentrates  on  political 
science  and  jurisprudence.  The  intending  physi- 
cian enters  a  "  pre-medical "  course  —  a  highly 
coordinated  scientific  curriculum  with  biology  as 
its  centre.  A  large  plurality  of  students,  espe- 
cially women,  are  preparing  to  teach,  and  shape 
their  studies  to  this  end. 

194 


A  UTILITARIAN  UNIVERSITY 

There  is  a  course  in  "  home  economics/'  which 
centres  in  the  chemistry  of  cooking,  sanitation, 
and  house  decoration,  and  is  founded  on  a  gen- 
eral study  of  chemistry,  biology,  and  bacteriology. 
Curiously  significant  of  the  trend  of  the  teaching 
are  courses  in  pharmacy  for  intending  druggists, 
and  the  course  in  commerce  for  business  men. 
Based  upon  the  College  of  Letters  and  Science 
is  a  graduate  school,  but  even  here  the  spirit  of 
pure  scholarship  is  less  advanced  than  is  desir- 
able. 

Resolutely  as  the  university  insists,  however, 
on  the  directly  utilitarian  aspect  of  education,  it 
has  resisted  any  trivial  ideal  of  "practicality." 
Purdue  has  a  railway  engine,  and  makes  its  stu- 
dents run  it  up  and  down  the  track  —  deeply 
impressing  prospective  employers.  Harvard  is 
crying  for  a  blast  furnace.  Wisconsin  regards 
the  undergraduate  course  as  all  too  brief  for  a 
thorough  grounding  in  science,  and  wisely  leaves 
its  students  to  gain  practice  in  real  workshops. 
Time  and  again  it  has  insisted  upon  the  value 
of  merely  scientific  culture.  The  remedy  for  oat 
smut,  much  prized  in  the  capital,  was  an  indirect 
and  casual  result  of  investigations  into  the  theory 

195 


WISCONSIN 

of  the  constituents  of  alcohol ;  and  the  celebrated 
milk  test  was  a  by-product  of  one  of  Professor 
Babcock's  many  non-utilitarian  investigations. 

In  his  inaugural  address  of  1904,  which 
marked  at  once  the  beginning  of  his  presidency 
and  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  granting  of 
the  first  university  degrees,  Doctor  Van  Hise 
laid  splendid  emphasis  on  this  point.  When 
Franklin  went  out  into  the  fields  to  fly  his  kite, 
he  said  in  effect,  the  figure  he  presented  would 
scarcely  have  inspired  a  rural  legislator  to  endow 
him  with  the  funds  of  the  state.  Yet  that  experi- 
ment, with  others  as  little  promising  of  utility, 
has  ended  in  opening  up  vast  new  sources  of 
mechanical  energy,  in  increasing  mechanical 
efficiency  and  facilitating  human  labor,  and  in 
binding  the  whole  world  together  in  electrical 
sympathy  without  which  our  present  hopes  of  in- 
dustrial progress  and  peace  among  nations  would 
be  impossible.  "  If,  half  a  century  since,  a  legis- 
lator in  France  had  wished  to  be  humorous  at 
the  expense  of  the  scientist,  what  better  object  of 
derision  could  he  have  found  than  his  country- 
man, Pasteur,  who  was  looking  through  a  micro- 
scope at  the  minute  forms  of  life,  studying  the 

196 


A  UTILITARIAN   UNIVERSITY 

nature  and  transformations  of  yeast  and  mi- 
crobes? And  yet  from  the  studies  of  Pasteur 
and  Koch  and  their  successors  have  sprung  the 
most  beneficent  discoveries  which  it  has  been 
the  lot  of  man  to  bestow  upon  his  fellow-men. 
The  plagues  of  cholera  and  yellow  fever  are  con- 
trolled ;  the  word  diphtheria  no  longer  whitens 
the  cheek  of  the  parent ;  even  tuberculosis  is  less 
dreaded  and  may  soon  be  conquered ;  aseptic 
surgery  performs  marvelous  operations  which  a 
few  years  ago  would  have  been  pronounced 
impossible.  The  human  suffering  thus  alleviated 
is  immeasurable." 

One  fact  is  fortunate  for  the  hope  that  Wis- 
consin may  develop  the  pursuit  of  truth  for  its 
own  sake.  The  College  of  Letters  and  Science  is 
still  the  largest  department  of  the  university, 
even  aside  from  its  graduate  school,  which  in 
recent  years  has  rapidly  expanded.  As  fast  as  the 
legislature  permits,  both  departments  are  to  be 
strengthened  on  the  side  of  pure  culture.  The 
progress  is  slow,  but  it  bids  fair  to  be  sure. 

The  Law  School  has  been  almost  completely 
made  over  according  to  the  most  advanced 
methods — those  of  the  case  system,  developed 

197 


WISCONSIN 

at  Harvard.  The  old  textbook  method  is  quicker 
and  easier,  and  it  produces  lawyers  who  have  at 
the  outset  considerably  greater  readiness  and 
efficiency  in  ordinary  court  practice.  It  is  still 
preferred  at  institutions  which  aim  to  establish 
their  graduates  as  quickly  as  possible  in  a  paying 
practice.  Wisconsin  does  not  extend  utilitarian- 
ism as  far  as  this.  It  has  adopted  the  new 
method  because  it  produces  a  far  broader  and 
deeper  type  of  legal  mind,  and  because  in  the 
long  run  its  graduates  are  winning  their  way 
into  positions  of  eminence  —  legal  and  judicial. 

There  are  times  when  considerations  of  immedi- 
ate utility  seem  to  crush  out  the  higher  ideals  of 
a  university.  The  mention  of  the  milk  test  or  oat 
smut  to  a  professor  in  the  College  of  Letters  and 
Science  is  a  lamentable  error  in  tact.  He  feels 
shackled  hand  and  foot  by  the  cry  for  immediate 
results.  Yet  it  is  a  good  thing  to  make  friends 
with  one's  bread  and  butter,  and  this  the  uni- 
versity has  very  ably  done.  Meantime  the  older 
order  of  legislator  is  giving  way  to  the  generation 
which  has  been  educated  at  the  university.  The 
time  should  arrive  before  long  when  the  question 
of  bread  and  butter  falls  into  its  proper  relation. 

198 


A  UTILITARIAN   UNIVERSITY 

Residentially  and  socially,  as  well  as  intellec- 
tually, Wisconsin  is  in  a  way  to  find  the  uses  of 
adversity  sweet.  In  the  past  —  indeed,  in  the 
present  —  few  of  our  great  institutions  have  been 
more  unfortunate;  but  in  the  not  distant  future 
it  bids  fair  to  equal,  perhaps  excel,  the  best. 

Somewhat  more  than  three  hundred  of  the 
men  students  find  agreeable  and  profitable  life  in 
the  fraternity  houses;  but  the  remaining  two  thou- 
sand and  more  have  not  a  single  dormitory,  and 
moreover  no  Union  or  social  centre  of  any  sort. 
They  are  scattered  about  the  little  city  in  board- 
ing-houses, with  few  ties  other  than  those  of  small 
cliques  formed  by  chance  acquaintance,  or  the 
accident  of  living  under  the  same  roof.  Two 
social  clubs  there  are,  the  Yellow  Helmet  and 
the  Monastics ;  but  they  are  only  a  few  years  old, 
have  no  kitchen  and  no  servants,  and  are  deserted 
except  for  a  few  hours  on  occasional  evenings. 
One  senior  society,  the  Iron  Cross,  is  formed  of 
representative  men  of  ability,  and  membership  in 
it  is  highly  prized ;  but  it  is  only  a  faint  shadow 
of  the  senior  societies  at  Yale  or  the  upperclass 
clubs  at  Princeton. 

The  character  of  Wisconsin  undergraduates  is 
199 


WISCONSIN 

that  of  the  better  element  in  the  community  from 
which  they  come  —  simple,  frank,  manly.  The 
moral  life,  I  gathered,  is  rather  exceptionally 
sound.  There  are  not  many  vicious  resorts  in 
Madison,  and  such  as  exist  are  closed  to  students. 
Most  of  the  fraternities  have  house  rules  of  their 
own  framing  against  malt  and  spirituous  liquors. 
Once  it  was  the  custom  to  evade  these  by  putting 
a  case  of  beer  on  a  shelf  outside  the  house  and 
drinking  it  with  head  sticking  out  of  the  window. 
Such  evasions  are  no  longer  countenanced.  Many 
fraternities  forbid  taking  a  freshman  to  a  saloon. 
In  the  near  future,  I  was  told,  the  legislature  will 
prohibit  saloons  within  three  quarters  of  a  mile 
of  the  university. 

There  are  souls,  perhaps,  to  whom  the  manners 
of  the  students  would  savor  overmuch  of  the 
howdy-rowdy.  Personally,  I  am  rather  fond  of 
the  exuberant  freshness  of  youth.  In  his  inau- 
gural address  President  Van  Hise,  whose  sense  of 
humor  perhaps  lacks  subtlety,  announced  that  the 
occasion  would  be  celebrated,  as  was  most  fitting, 
by  abolishing  for  that  year  all  final  examinations. 
Great  was  the  joy  of  the  undergraduates  —  until 
the  president  wrote  a  letter  to  the  college  paper, 

200 


A  UTILITARIAN  UNIVERSITY 

explaining  that  the  remark  was  a  joke  Then  there 
was  destruction  of  fences,  burning  of  gates,  and 
a  fine  example  of  that  cherished  institution,  a 
nightshirt  parade. 

A  few  years  ago,  when  the  Faculty  for  a  time 
abolished  inter-' varsity  football,  the  town  awoke 
one  morning  to  find  written  across  the  gymnasium 
in  huge  white  characters  the  legend  PING-PONG 
HALL.  The  leading  Faculty  abolitionists  were 
hanged  and  burned  in  effigy,  and  in  the  light  of 
the  fire  members  of  the  eleven  —  one  of  them 
fullback  on  the  all-Western  team  of  the  year 

—  played  marbles,  while  the  crowd  of  students 
gathered  about  and  gave  the  college  yell  with 
brazen  lungs  for  every  successful  shot.    I  have 
seen  far  more  violent  disorder  at  Harvard  and 
at  Oxford,  with  far  less  of  the  inspiration  of  sa- 
tirical wit. 

One  of  the  things  that  delighted  the  Moseley 
Commission  with  Wisconsin  was  its  democratic 
tone.  In  one  way  the  university  is  democratic. 
Where  there  is  little  or  no  social  organization 
social  distinctions  are  few.  But  such  democracy 

—  the  much-lauded  virtue  of  the  new  West  —  is 
natural,  if  not  inevitable.  It  is  a  very  different 

201 


WISCONSIN 

thing  from  the  democracy  that  is  sometimes  found 
in  old  and  well-organized  communities.  That  has 
to  be  achieved,  and  is  one  of  the  rarest  flowers 
of  civilization.  Already  at  Wisconsin,  local  observ- 
ers assured  me,  lines  of  caste  are  drawn  between 
rival  fraternities,  as  indeed  they  seem  to  be  at 
all  fraternity  institutions;  and  here  as  elsewhere 
the  fact  is  more  regrettable  because  the  basis 
of  judgment  is  birth  and  manners  rather  than 
ability. 

The  line  between  the  fraternity  and  the  non- 
fraternity  elements  is  sharp,  and  the  strife  keen. 
It  is  a  virtue  for  a  fraternity  man  to  know  many 
of  the  so-called  "barbs;"  but  it  is  a  virtue  of 
necessity,  for  the  "  barbs  "  have  the  power  of 
outvoting  them  in  class  elections,  and  have  not 
infrequently  exercised  it.  The  fraternities  claim, 
of  course,  that  they  have  carefully  selected  all 
the  representative  men;  but  where  there  is  so 
little  community  life  it  is  obvious  that  such  a 
claim  is  false.  Among  two  thousand  there  must 
be  many  good  fellows  and  many  potential  leaders 
who  are  never  discovered. 

This  evil,  as  we  have  seen,  is  characteristic  of 
all  American  universities,  —  even  Princeton  and 

202 


A  UTILITARIAN  UNIVERSITY 

Yale,  which  have  developed  the  most  efficient 
social  system.  But  it  has  reached  its  climax,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  in  the  state  universities,  most 
of  which  are  quite  without  dormitories  of  any 
kind  for  men  students.  At  Michigan  they  have 
a  Union  in  embryo;  but  of  all  the  universities 
I  have  visited,  it  is  the  only  one  that  had 
never  considered  the  residential  hall  or  "quad." 
The  University  of  Wisconsin  is  deficient  in 
general  societies,  and  has  no  Union;  but  it  is 
fortunate  in  having  a  president  whose  ideas  of 
undergraduate  life  are  as  advanced  as  his  policy 
is  vigorous. 

Utilitarian  as  the  aims  of  Doctor  Van  Hise 
have  of  necessity  been  hitherto,  his  plans  for  the 
future  are  in  the  truest  sense  of  the  word  human- 
itarian. The  things  a  fellow  learns  from  books, 
lectures,  and  laboratories  form  only  a  part,  and 
the  smaller  part,  of  a  college  education.  Know- 
ledge is  power  only  when  one  knows  how  to  use 
it;  and,  in  order  to  make  it  efficient  to  any  high 
end,  it  has  to  be  backed  by  well-poised,  well- 
mannered,  and  forcible  character.  What  a  fellow 
learns  is  less  important  than  what  he  becomes. 
It  is  President  Van  Hise's  purpose  to  build  up 

203 


WISCONSIN 

the  general  life,  social,  residential,  even  athletic, 
by  means  of  residential  halls. 

He  is,  moreover,  in  a  position  to  do  so  in  the 
near  future.  The  very  fact  that  there  is  no  sys- 
tem of  dormitories  places  him  at  an  advantage 
over  Eastern  institutions  in  that  he  has  a  clean 
slate  for  a  clean  sweep  of  organization.  A  few 
years  ago  he  secured  from  the  legislature  a  grant 
of  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year  for  stu- 
dent buildings,  and  has  already  architectural 
plans  for  a  series  of  quadrangular  halls,  each 
with  its  common-room,  kitchen,  and  dining-room. 
Backward  as  Wisconsin  has  hitherto  been,  it  bids 
fair  to  lead  all  its  rivals  in  this  widely  impending 
and  momentous  reform. 

It  is  not  possible,  even  if  it  were  desirable, 
to  reproduce  slavishly  a  foreign  institution.  In 
many  details  a  hall  at  Wisconsin  must  differ 
from  an  English  college.  Yet  this  much  can  be 
said :  that,  in  so  far  as  it  can  be  made  a  compact 
community,  it  will  work  for  the  good  of  the 
university  as  a  whole  by  broadening  and  ad- 
vancing the  social  and  athletic  life. 

I  had  the  pleasure  of  going  over  the  subject 
in  detail  with  President  Van  Hise,  and  of  ex- 

204 


A  UTILITARIAN  UNIVERSITY 

plaining  to  him  the  difficulties  President  Wilson 
has  encountered  in  proposing  the  quadrangular 
hall  as  a  substitute  for  the  existing  social  sys- 
tem. No  attempt  will  be  made  to  combat  the 
fraternities.  The  halls  may  lessen  their  prestige, 
but  only  in  so  far  as  that  prestige  is  unfortunate. 
And  it  will  always  be  in  their  power  to  maintain 
their  prestige,  and  even  to  advance  it,  by  includ- 
ing all  representative  men,  many  of  whom  would 
naturally  be  chosen  from  the  second  and  third 
year  men  in  the  halls. 

Wisconsin  is  the  paradise  of  the  co-ed,  —  a 
fact  indicated,  among  other  things,  in  the  defer- 
ential habit  of  calling  her,  not  co-ed,  but  woman 
student.  Days  and  days  I  spent  trying  to  track 
down  the  coeducational  problem,  until  I  seemed, 
even  to  myself,  to  be  the  victim  of  an  evil  mind. 
There  is  no  coeducational  problem  at  Wisconsin. 
Members  of  the  Faculty,  and  among  them  recent 
arrivals  from  Eastern  universities,  declared  this 
in  so  many  words.  To  the  undergraduates  —  and 
I  lived  and  took  most  of  my  meals  at  different 
fraternity  houses  —  the  only  problem  with  regard 
to  the  woman  student  seemed  to  be  how  to  get 
nearer,  or  next.  For  there  is  only  one  woman  to 

205 


WISCONSIN 

half  a  dozen  men,  and  the  most  approved  use 
of  an  idle  hour  appears  to  be  what  is  called 
"  fussing."  l 

The  unrestrained  social  intercourse  natural  to 
the  West  has  full  swing,  and  the  result  is,  as 
always  in  a  self-respecting  community,  a  state  of 
innocence  which  to  any  one  from  a  highly  chap- 
eroned community  seems  little  short  of  Arca- 

1  In  support  of  this  statement  the  college  page  of  a  Chicago 
paper  quotes  the  following  spirited  paragraph  from  the  Wiscon- 
sin Cardinal. 

"  The  football  management  deserves  every  credit  for  giving 
the  rooter  of  earnest  mind  and  able  lungs  a  place  to  go,  and 
express  the  faith  that  is  in  him.  We  hope  its  existence  will  incite 
the  Fusser's  Union  to  dissolve  all  partnerships  for  once.  No 
Wisconsin  girl  ought  to  be  so  shy  and  timorous  as  to  stay  away 
from  the  game  for  lack  of  a  Percy-boy  to  escort  and  protect  her. 
On  the  contrary  she  ought  to  be  ashamed  to  make  a  full-grown 
rooter  sit  by  her  and  lower  his  useful  voice  to  a  society  snicker. 
Amorous  dalliances  are  incompatible  with  good  yelling.  Mark 
Antony  was  the  champion  fusser  of  antiquity,  but  he  stood  up 
against  the  shiftiest  fighters  of  every  weight  of  his  time,  so  long 
as  he  eschewed  all  cozy-corner  work  when  there  was  trouble. 
But  once,  at  Alexandria,  he  took  Cleopatra  along  to  watch 
hostilities,  —  and  a  week  later  Mark  was  measured  for  his  sar- 
cophagus." 

The  journal  adds  :  "  Such  plain  heart-to-heart  talks  are  not 
bestowed  upon  persons  of  no  importance.  The  '  co-ed  '  at  Madi- 
son must  be  a  real  personage."  Also  Wisconsin  editorial  writers 
are  the  real  thing. 

206 


X"  — 

2    - 
£   I 

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8  2 

«      « 
^     * 

il 


A  UTILITARIAN  UNIVERSITY 

dian.  About  a  hundred  of  the  young  women 
room  and  dine  in  Chadbourne  Hall.  Another 
hundred  live  in  sorority  houses.  The  rest  live  in 
their  own  homes  or  board  in  student  lodging- 
houses  —  some  of  them  in  houses  partly  occupied 
by  men  students. 

Until  last  year  there  had  been  no  dean  of 
women.  The  new  dean  is  trying,  and  with  suc- 
cess, to  prevent  men  and  women  students  from 
living  in  the  same  houses. 

The  matter  of  chaperons  is  more  difficult. 
Each  of  the  sororities  has  a  matron,  but  she  is 
largely  a  figure-head.  She  has  not  even  a  posi- 
tion on  the  House  Committee,  so  that,  though 
she  has  responsibilities  to  the  university,  she  has 
little  or  no  authority  over  the  students. 

Buggy-riding  flourishes.  One  of  the  under- 
graduates admitted  to  me  that  it  was  not  unusual 
for  parties  of  two  and  three  couples  to  drive  out 
to  the  several  hotels  on  Lake  Mendota  for  dinner. 
"I  suppose,"  he  added,  "that  that  will  seem  to 
you  horribly  crude."  On  the  contrary,  it  seemed 
like  the  Golden  Age  —  or  like  my  own  boyhood 
in  this  same  Middle  West.  I  asked  if  a  single 
couple  ever  went  on  such  an  expedition.  He 

207 


WISCONSIN 

shook  his  head.  The  girl's  own  dignity,  if  not 
the  traditions  of  the  university,  would  forbid 
this.  When  I  put  the  same  question  to  another 
undergraduate,  he  smiled  and  said  that  occasion- 
ally a  couple  would  go  forth  to  dine  in  single 
blessedness. 

Yet  I  am  convinced  that  no  serious  harm  is 
done.  Were  engagements  common?  By  no 
means.  Sometimes  gossiping  souls  would  allege 
that  a  couple  were  engaged  —  or  if  not,  that 
they  ought  to  be.  But  no  engagements  were 
announced,  except,  in  most  cases,  as  the  immedi- 
ate prelude  to  student  marriages,  which  are  rare. 
And  this  was  wise,  one  informant  told  me;  for 
then  if  the  young  woman  went  home  and  married 
a  man  in  her  native  town  no  one  could  prove 
that  she  was  unduly  experienced,  or  that  the 
undergraduate  had  been  jilted. 

And  this  leads  to  the  only  thing  approaching 
a  coeducational  problem.  Though  men  and 
women  are  of  much  the  same  age,  there  is  a  rad- 
ical difference  in  their  situation  in  life.  The 
women  are  in  a  position  to  be  married,  but  the 
men  are  not  in  a  position  to  marry  them,  as 
regards  either  age  or  worldly  goods.  The  women, 

208 


A   UTILITARIAN  UNIVERSITY 

arriving  from  farm,  village,  or  city,  regard  their 
life  in  the  university  as  a  social  coming-out  — 
their  first  and  perhaps  only  chance  for  a  real 
good  time.  To  the  men  the  university  is  a  place 
of  preparation  for  the  serious  work  of  life,  and 
for  manly  comradeships  and  sports.  One  of  the 
Faculty  told  me  that  of  late  years  the  women  had 
taken  to  appearing  on  the  campus  in  fine  array, 
as  if  coming  to  market.  That,  he  said,  was  not 
playing  the  game  —  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
men  were  in  no  situation  to  buy. 

It  is  a  part  of  the  plan  of  the  president  to 
build  residential  halls  for  the  young  women,  also. 
Such  halls  should  assist  the  dean  of  women  in 
dignifying  the  office  of  chaperon.  If  experience 
shows  that  dining  out  by  single  couples  is  inad- 
visable, it  should  not  prove  impossible  to  foster 
a  community  sentiment  against  it. 

No  university  is  more  fortunate  than  Wiscon- 
sin in  its  site.  The  ideal  location,  it  has  often 
been  said,  is  a  town  of  character  and  importance 
that  is  yet  not  large  enough  to  dominate  or  ab- 
sorb the  undergraduate  life.  Madison  is  the 
capital  of  the  state,  and  the  undergraduates 
come  easily,  and  on  the  whole  wholesomely,  in 

209 


WISCONSIN 

touch  with  the  political  life  of  the  country.  The 
social  and  intellectual  life  of  the  town  is  of  a 
very  high  quality.  Its  age,  which  is  consider- 
able, and  the  presence  of  the  legislature,  have 
given  it  an  intellectual  and  social  tone  far  above 
the  average  of  Western  university  towns.  It  has 
been  known  to  call  itself  the  Athens  of  the  West. 
Good  plays  and  good  music  come  often.  The 
undergraduates  deny  that  they  call  the  univer- 
sity the  Princeton  of  the  West ;  but  they  are 
ready  to  admit  that  others  have  so  dubbed  it. 

The  four  lakes  of  Madison,  magically  set 
among  wooded,  rolling  country,  give  the  place 
a  beauty  unrivaled  among  Eastern  universities. 
Longfellow  once  wrote  a  poem  about  those  lakes, 
though  he  had  never  seen  them.  Imagine,  then, 
the  rapture  of  those  who  live  on  their  shores ! 

Though  Wisconsin  still  falls  somewhat  short 
of  leadership  among  American  universities,  it 
would  be  hard  to  find  an  institution  that  is  more 
keenly  alive  to  its  environment  or  more  vigor- 
ously functioning. 


VII 
THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

f  MHE  strength  of  our  nation,  it  has  been  said, 
-•-  lies  in  the  fact  that  every  boy  aspires  to 
rise  above  the  station  of  his  father,  and,  by  vir- 
tue of  democratic  opportunity,  is  able  to  do  so. 
But  what  is  the  outlook  of  the  farm  boy  ? 

In  the  two  decades  from  1880  to  1900  the  aver- 
age value  of  American  farms  with  their  equip- 
ment almost  doubled,  mounting  from  $3516  to 
$6531.  This  was  due  in  part  to  the  increasing 
use  of  farm  machinery.  Very  largely  it  was  due 
to  a  revolution  in  farm  methods.  Extensive  farm- 
ing is  giving  way  to  intensive  farming.  When 
rich  land  could  be  had  for  a  few  dollars  an  acre, 
it  was  enough  to  skim  the  cream  of  a  quarter- 
section.  With  land  worth  from  seventy-five  to  a 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  an  acre,  every  furrow 
must  be  worked  for  its  maximum  yield,  every 
head  of  stock  must  be  bred  and  fed  to  produce 
the  maximum  return.  Year  by  year  it  is  becom- 

211 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

ing  more  necessary  for  a  farmer  to  be,  on  the 
one  hand,  a  man  of  capital,  and,  on  the  other,  a 
man  of  thrifty  intelligence. 

Some  things  are  in  the  farm  boy's  favor.  Farm 
labor  commands  a  high  wage,  enabling  him  to 
save ;  while  the  difficulty  of  procuring  labor  of 
any  sort  disposes  land-owners  to  rent  out  such 
tracts  as  they  cannot  farm  in  person,  rather  than 
intrust  them  to  an  overseer.  Yet,  if  the  requisite 
of  capital  keeps  on  increasing,  it  will  not  be  many 
decades  before  the  ambition  to  own  a  farm  will 
be  all  but  impossible.  Intead  of  rising,  the  farm 
boy  will  become  a  laborer,  and  a  laborer  without 
hope.  Already  there  is  a  familiar  touch  in  Rogers' s 
description  of  the  English  farm  hand :  "  He  can- 
not cherish  any  ambition,  and  is,  in  consequence, 
dull  and  brutish,  reckless  and  supine." 

The  hope  of  the  farm  boy,  no  less  than  of  the 
boy  who  intends  to  live  in  the  city,  lies  in  educa- 
tion. As  hired  help  at  the  outset,  he  should  be  a 
man  of  intelligence,  and,  when  he  comes  into  his 
own,  he  must  be  a  practiced  master  of  his  craft. 
Our  educators  have  long  been  alive  to  the  situa- 
tion, especially  in  the  West.  Every  state  has  its  col- 
lege of  agriculture,  liberally  endowed  and  manned 

212 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

by  an  able  faculty.  But  the  number  of  students 
they  attract  is  pitifully  small. 

The  farmer  is  a  slave  to  the  spirit  of  conserva- 
tism. A  graduate  of  one  of  our  foremost  colleges 
of  agriculture  lately  went  to  a  Southern  state, 
full  of  the  hope  of  introducing  modern  scientific 
methods.  His  new  neighbors  had  always  broker} 
the  ground  with  a  single  horse  dragging  a  single 
plow.  As  a  farm  boy  in  the  North  the  missionary 
had  been  used  to  a  team  of  four  horses  dragging 
four  plows,  which  enabled  one  driver  to  do  the 
work  of  four  men.  In  college  he  had  become 
familiar  with  traction  engines,  each  dragging  six- 
teen ten-inch  plows,  four  six-foot  harrows,  and  a, 
press  drill  for  planting  seed  wheat,  the  whole 
capable  of  plowing,  harrowing,  and  planting  from 
fifty  to  seventy-five  acres  a  day,  rough  land  or 
smooth,  hillside  or  prairie.  But  he  knew  his  neigh,- 
bors,  or  thought  he  knew  them,  and  began  by 
hitching  two  horses  to  two  plows.  His  neighbors 
were  as  deeply  scandalized  as  if  he  had  attacked 
morality  and  religion.  They  predicted  dire  failure 
to  his  crops.  His  only  answer  was :  "  Wait  till 
you  see  my  potatoes  !  "  In  due  time  they  assem- 
bled, eager  to  confound  the  heretic.  When  they 

213 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

saw  the  yield  of  his  land,  they  stroked  their 
beards,  shifted  their  quids,  and  departed  in  silence, 
with  the  air  of  one  whose  God  has  forsaken  him. 
For  untold  thousands  of  years  the  farmer  has 
balked  at  new  ways.  As  surely  as  the  man  who 
first  struck  fire  from  flint  marked  forever  the 
superiority  of  his  race  over  the  other  animals, 
so  surely  did  the  man  (or,  what  is  more  likely, 
the  woman)  who  first  broke  ground  and  planted, 
mark  the  beginning  of  civilization.  Yet  our  Puri- 
tan forefathers,  who  gave  up  home  and  country 
in  the  cause  of  freedom  of  the  conscience  and 
freedom  of  the  press  —  and  after  them,  their 
descendants,  who  wrested  independence  from 
England  with  rifle  and  sword  —  had  no  better 
farm  implements  than  the  wooden  bull-plow  and 
the  wooden  flail,  which  had  served  mankind, 
unchanged  in  any  essential  feature,  since  long  be- 
fore the  dawn  of  history.  In  1755  General  Brad- 
dock  could  find  only  twenty-five  farm  wagons  fit 
for  transports  in  the  entire  colonies  of  Virginia 
and  Maryland.  As  late  as  1850,  according  to 
the  Twelfth  Census,  the  implements  of  agricul- 
ture were  hand  implements,  excepting  only  the 
cotton  gin. 

214 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

Then  came  a  sudden  and  mighty  awakening 
to  the  value  of  farm  machinery,  the  forerunner 
and  prophet  of  an  awakening  to  science  which 
as  yet  is  scarcely  begun.  What  it  has  meant  is 
very  clearly  recorded  in  a  monograph  by  H.  W. 
Quaintance,  Ph.  D. 

1.  The  statistics  of  cereals  show  that,  during 
the  entire  period  of  the  introduction  of  farm  ma- 
chinery (1840-1900),  the  proportion  of  crops  to 
population  steadily  increased :  the  population  in 
1900  was  only  4.42,  while  the   production  of 
cereals  was  7.18  times  as  great  as  in  1840. 

2.  In  the  crops  in  which  machinery  has  been 
a  leading  factor,  each  day's  work  now  produces 
almost  five  times  what  it  formerly  produced. 

3.  The  cost  of  production  of   the  principal 
crops,  though  affected  by  the  increase  in  wages, 
has  been  reduced  one  half. 

The  human  result  of  all  this  has  been  to  make 
farm  work  easier  and  farm  hours  shorter,  both 
for  men  and  for  women.  The  lumpish,  stooping 
shoulders  of  the  man  with  the  hoe  have  given 
way  to  erect  carriage  and  lithe  stride.  Increased 
leisure,  abetted  by  rural  delivery  of  mails,  are 
making  the  modern  farmer  a  reader  and  a  thinker. 

215 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

In  short,  he  is,  in  the  words  of  J.  R.  Dodge,  "  a 
more  efficient  worker,  a  broader  man,  and  a  better 


citizen." 


Yet  much  as  machinery  has  meant  to  the 
farmer,  science  may  and  should  mean  more.  But 
how  awaken  him  to  the  grandeur  of  the  oppor- 
tunity? In  the  case  of  machinery  the  way  was 
easy.  We  are  an  inventive  people,  and  the  farmer 
is  able  in  the  end  to  grasp  what  is  apparent  to 
his  eye.  Almost  twice  as  much  money  is  invested 
in  farming  as  in  all  our  other  industries  com- 
bined; but  while  our  schools  of  engineering  — 
civil,  mechanical,  mining,  and  electrical  —  are 
many  and  their  graduates  legion,  the  farmer  is 
still  content  to  educate  his  boy  in  the  district 
school. 

The  agricultural  college  had  an  inspiration. 
It  adapted  an  old  motto :  "  If  you  would  the 
farm  boy  win,  with  the  farmer  first  begin !  "  And 
so  we  have  agricultural  extension,  which  brings 
the  results  of  science  to  the  farmer's  eye. 

Here  is  an  incident  that  should  jog  the  most 
self-satisfied.  Iowa  is  above  all  other  states  agri- 
cultural, and  corn  is  its  great  crop,  the  basis 
of  its  prosperity.  In  1903  it  was  discovered  that 

216 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

the  crop  was  falling  regularly  below  the  normal 
yield  of  land  of  such  fertility,  the  average  be- 
ing thirty-three  bushels  an  acre,  where  intelli- 
gent farmers  produced  sixty  and  seventy.  Now 
the  professor  of  agronomy  at  the  state  college, 
P.  G.  Holden,  has  had  a  lifelong  belief  in  the 
value  of  science  to  the  farm,  and  has  given  his 
life  to  the  task  of  winning  the  farmer  for  the 
sake  of  his  boy.  He  discovered  the  reason  for 
the  decline  in  the  corn  crop. 

Twelve  hundred  samples  of  seed  corn,  gathered 
from  anxious  farmers  in  different  sections,  showed 
that  an  average  of  eighteen  per  cent  of  the  ker- 
nels were  dead,  and  that  an  additional  nineteen 
per  cent  were  so  low  in  vitality  as  to  be  unfit  to 
plant.  Much  of  the  rest  was  so  weak  that  in  a 
cold  spring,  such  as  actually  followed,  it  would 
either  fail  to  grow  or  give  weak  plants.  Think 
what  this  means.  The  farmers  were  losing  the 
use  of  over  thirty  per  cent  of  their  land,  of  over 
thirty  per  cent  of  their  labor  in  planting  and  cul- 
tivating. And  for  what  reason?  Because  they 
failed  to  make  sure  that  the  seeds  they  planted 
would  grow. 

One  would  naturally  conclude  that  to  test  an 
217 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

ear  of  seed  corn  is  a  difficult  matter.  This  is  how 
it  is  done.  Put  two  inches  of  moist  sand,  soil,  or 
sawdust  in  the  bottom  of  any  old  box,  and  mark 
it  out  in  squares.  Take  six  kernels  from  each  ear 
of  seed  corn,  two  near  the  butt,  two  near  the 
tip,  and  two  from  the  middle,  and  place  them  in 
a  square  with  a  number  corresponding  to  the 
number  of  the  ear.  Cover  the  whole  with  cheese- 
cloth, and  above  it  place  two  inches  more  of  damp 
sand,  soil,  or  sawdust.  Keep  the  box  warm.  In 
due  time  the  live  kernels  will  sprout,  about  as 
they  would  when  planted.  In  cases  where  the 
kernels  do  not  sprout,  or  show  feeble  growth, 
feed  the  corresponding  ears  to  live  stock.  Plant 
the  rest.  The  smallness  of  the  total  amount  of 
work  required  may  be  judged  by  the  fact  that  it 
takes  only  twelve  to  fourteen  ears  of  corn  to  plant 
an  acre.  At  the  expense  of  a  few  hours'  labor  on 
each  farm  the  corn  lands  could  be  made  to  yield 
not  sixty  but  ninety  per  cent  of  the  maximum 
crop,  a  gain  to  the  farmers  of  some  eighteen  mil- 
lions of  dollars. 

But  how  turn  the  discovery  to  practical  ac- 
count? The  college  did  its  heroic  best  by  means 
of  the  mails;  but  no  one  knows  better  than  the 

218 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

professor  of  agriculture  how  deeply  rooted  is  the 
farmer's  distrust  of  men  of  education.  It  re- 
mained for  a  railway  man,  W.  H.  Given,  superin- 
tendent of  the  Rock  Island,  to  suggest  a  plan  — 
and  it  may  be  remarked  in  passing  that,  if  there 
is  one  thing  the  farmer  distrusts  more  deeply 
than  the  college,  it  is  the  railroad.  Mr.  Given's 
motive  was  not  educational,  by  no  means  philan- 
thropic. Each  bushel  that  yielded  the  farmer 
forty  cents  would  yield  his  road,  for  transporting 
corn  or  live  stock,  a  fraction  of  a  cent,  and  he  was 
out  for  the  fraction. 

He  placed  at  the  disposal  of  Professor  Holden 
and  his  staff  a  special  train,  on  which  they  made 
a  tour,  stopping  at  every  station  to  give  an 
object-lesson  in  testing  seed  corn,  with  a  short 
but  very  straight  talk  on  what  was  to  be  gained 
by  it.  He  also  gave  the  farmers  free  transporta- 
tion to  and  from  the  lectures.  Other  railways  fol- 
lowed suit,  until  the  Iowa  town  is  a  rarity  that 
has  not  had  its  corn-seed  demonstration. 

I  asked  one  of  the  corn-train  professors  whether 
the  farmers  were  not  eager  for  enlightenment. 
"Not  altogether,"  he  admitted  with  a  smile.  "It 
won't  do  to  assume  that  you  know  more  about 

219 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

farming  than  they  do.  I  begin  by  saying  that 
they  already  know  everything  I  am  going  to 
tell  them.  Then,  when  I  have  told  them,  I  say: 
'You  men  know  all  this.  But  why  don't  you 
do  it?  You  are  too  shiftless  to  stir  yourself 
to  a  few  hours'  work  three  days  before  plant- 
ing!' Then  they  nudge  one  another  and  say, 
'  Well,  I  guess  the  boy  has  about  got  the  rights 
onus!'" 

I  asked  if  they  really  did  grasp  what  he  had 
told  them.  "Oh,  yes,"  he  said;  "when  I  have 
shown  them  the  boxes." 

A  traveling  man  told  me  of  a  farmer  who 
said :  "  A  boy  with  book  learning,  by  hek,  showed 
whiskered  men  how  to  mind  their  own  business 
-whiskered  men!  And,  by  hek,  he  was  right!" 
The  "boy"  was  upward  of  thirty,  and  had  been 
born  on  a  farm:  in  the  leisure  left  by  his  duties 
as  a  professor  he  cultivates  a  farm  of  eighty  acres. 
Yet,  after  years  of  corn  trains  and  similar  enter- 
prises, the  young  professor  told  me,  not  more 
than  one  farmer  in  a  hundred  tests  his  seed  corn 
thoroughly.  As  for  seed  oats,  most  farmers  fan 
them  so  as  to  eliminate  the  light  and  chaffy 
grains;  but  only  fifteen  per  cent  fan  them  so  as 

220 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

to  eliminate  also  the  small  plump  grains,  leaving 
only  those  that  are  both  plump  and  large. 

The  chief  significance  of  all  this  lies  in  the 
fact  that  in  no  state  is  the  level  of  agricultural 
intelligence  higher  than  in  Iowa.  A  man  who  had 
traveled  extensively  in  the  region  west  of  the 
Missouri  told  me  that,  time  and  again,  on  remark- 
ing a  thrifty-looking  farm,  he  was  met  with  the 
word  that  the  man  who  owned  it  came  from  Iowa. 
One  farmer  said:  "  I  call  myself  from  loway ;  but 
I  lived  seven  months  there  and  seven  years  in 
Kansas." 

This  is  only  the  most  spectacular  of  many  tri- 
umphs of  agricultural  extension.  As  early  as 
1886  the  University  of  Wisconsin  originated  the 
system  of  Farmers'  Institutes,  or  meetings  held 
in  various  districts  for  practical  instruction  and 
conference  on  all  matters  pertaining  to  the  farm 
and  farm  life.  The  system  has  since  spread 
over  the  larger  part  of  the  country.  Any  com- 
munity can  secure  an  institute  by  early  applica- 
tion to  the  superintendent.  Wisconsin  holds  ap- 
proximately one  hundred  two  days'  institutes  a 
year,  in  all  portions  of  the  state,  each  especially 
adapted  to  the  crops  and  conditions  of  the  local- 

221 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

ity.  There  are  also  half  a  dozen  special-feature 
institutes,  treating  tobacco,  potatoes,  corn,  and 
dairying.  At  the  close  of  the  institute  season  a 
round-up  institute  is  held  and  many  papers  of 
timely  interest  presented.  The  Wisconsin  legis- 
lature, in  its  last  session,  voiced  the  popular  ap- 
preciation of  the  institutes  by  increasing  the 
annual  appropriation  for  them  from  twelve  to 
twenty  thousand  dollars. 

Equally  popular  and  beneficial  are  the  "Farm- 
ers' Short  Courses."  Originated  in  1899  by 
Dean  Curtiss,  of  Iowa  State  College,  they  were  at 
once  widely  imitated.  While  the  regular  work  in 
the  college  is  suspended  for  the  Christmas  holi- 
days, the  doors  are  thrown  open  to  farmers,  dairy- 
men, and  stock  breeders.  About  two  hundred  and 
fifty  attended  the  first  short  course,  and  the  num- 
ber gradually  rose  to  a  thousand.  The  ages  of 
the  short-course  pupils  range  from  twenty-five 
to  seventy-five.  Object  lessons,  minute  and  thor- 
ough, are  given  in  all  points  vital  to  the  farmer, 
the  dairyman,  the  stock  breeder,  and  the  horti- 
culturist; arid  then  follow  contests  in  judging 
live  stock,  cereals,  and  fruit. 

The  pupils  who  journey  to  the  farmers'  short 
222 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

courses  are  naturally  much  more  eager  and  ener- 
getic than  the  average  of  farmers  who  attended 
the  corn-train  lectures  and  institutes,  many  of 
them  having  been  successful  farmers  and  stock 
hreeders  for  a  lifetime.  At  the  more  prominent 
colleges,  such  as  Iowa,  they  come  from  all  parts 
of  the  continent,  from  Toronto  to  Texas  and  from 
Virginia  to  California. 

In  1905  the  business  men  of  Red  Oak,  Iowa, 
raised  a  guarantee  fund  of  three  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  a  dozen  or  so  of  professors  came  from 
the  college  to  hold  a  short  course.  The  course 
has  been  repeated  yearly,  the  attendance  mount- 
ing from  two  hundred  and  forty  to  four  hundred 
and  twenty.  Other  cities  have  followed  Red 
Oak's  example. 

Perhaps  the  most  thorough  engine  of  exten- 
sion is  the  experiment  station  run  in  connection 
with  the  county  poor  farms.  First  instituted  in 
Iowa  in  1903,  they  are  already  spreading  rapidly. 
The  experiments  at  each  station  relate  to  the 
peculiar  problems  of  the  soils  and  crops  of  the 
vicinity,  and  give  opportunity  for  object-lessons 
far  more  convincing  than  those  of  the  seed  trains. 
Time  was  when  the  farmer  of  the  rich  Western 

223 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

soils  heaped  his  manure  all  winter  long  on  the 
ice  of  his  brook,  and  left  it  to  be  carried  away 
in  the  spring,  polluting  the  stream.  To-day  the 
value  of  manure  is  understood ;  and  in  many 
states,  in  which  the  soil  is  naturally  poor  or  is 
becoming  exhausted,  owing  to  the  unintelligent 
repetition  of  crops,  the  experiment  stations  give 
demonstrations  in  the  adaptation  of  special  artifi- 
cial fertilizers  to  special  soils. 

The  most  popular  form  of  experiment  is  the 
seed  competition.  Samples  are  obtained  from 
each  farm  in  the  country  round,  and  are  planted 
and  cultivated  in  separate  plots  under  identi- 
cal conditions.  At  harvest  time  there  is  a  picnic 
on  the  farm,  the  attendance  often  rising  as  high 
as  three  thousand.  The  extension  professors 
judge  the  rival  exhibits,  giving  the  reasons  for 
their  verdicts.  As  a  rule,  the  men  whose  seeds 
turn  out  best  are  found  to  be  the  ones  who  have 
the  thriftiest  barns,  the  best  machinery,  and  the 
largest  balance  in  the  bank ;  and  the  professors 
are  not  slow  to  point  out  the  relation  between  in- 
telligence and  success. 

In  Wisconsin  —  indeed,  in  many  a  live  agricul- 
tural state  —  extension  has  been  equally  aggress- 

224 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

ive  and  successful.  No  factor  has  done  more  to 
increase  its  effect  than  the  work  of  Professor 
R.  A.  Moore  in  breeding  cereal  and  forage 
plants.  Wisconsin  is  primarily  a  dairy  region.  If 
you  ask  the  way  to  the  nearest  grocer,  you  will 
be  told  to  go  three  cheese  factories  to  the  right 
and  then  two  creameries  to  the  left.  Now  corn  is 
the  first  essential  of  the  dairy  industry.  But  the 
state  lies  north  of  the  great  corn  belt,  and  large 
areas  of  it  are  swept  by  cold  northeasters  from 
Lake  Superior  and  Lake  Michigan.  In  some  dis- 
tricts the  growing  season  is  so  short  that  it  used 
to  be  impossible  even  to  grow  corn  for  silage. 

By  years  of  selection  and  breeding  of  corn 
Professor  Moore  has  produced  two  types,  one 
adapted  to  the  southern  and  western  counties 
and  another  to  the  colder  counties  that  border 
the  lakes.  These  improved  breeds,  together  with 
improved  methods  of  cultivation,  have  raised  the 
average  yield  per  acre  to  forty-one  and  a  half 
bushels,  placing  the  state  in  the  second  position 
in  this  respect,  in  spite  of  the  handicaps  of  soil 
and  climate.  Professor  Moore  has  been  equally 
successful  in  developing  a  special  breed  of  corn 
for  silage ;  and  the  same  methods  are  now 

225 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

being  applied  with  similar  success  to  barley  and 
oats. 

Oat  smut,  a  fungous  growth  that  blasts  the 
grain  and  spreads  with  amazing  rapidity,  is 
prevalent  in  the  North  Central  States,  and  once 
cost  Wisconsin  millions  of  dollars  yearly.  Loew, 
now  of  Tokio,  discovered  the  value  of  formal- 
dehyde as  a  germ  killer  about  1890.  Bolley, 
then  of  the  Indiana  experiment  station  and  now 
of  North  Dakota,  was  the  first  to  use  it  against 
oat  smut.  Professor  Moore  took  up  the  dis- 
covery and,  by  an  exceedingly  active  extension 
campaign,  has  virtually  eradicated  the  pest  in 
Wisconsin. 

The  diseases  of  cattle  have  received  similarly 
successful  attention.  Post  mortem  demonstra- 
tions held  at  state  and  county  fairs,  and  even 
before  the  legislature,  have  awakened  interest  in 
the  tuberculin  test,  by  which  it  is  possible  to 
eliminate  all  affected  cattle  from  a  herd.  Farmers 
attending  the  short  courses  have  been  taught  to 
apply  the  test;  tuberculin  has  been  furnished 
free  of  charge,  and  individual  cases  have  been 
handled  by  correspondence.  During  the  past  two 
years  twenty-five  thousand  voluntary  tests  have 

226 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

been  secured,  and  the  affected  animals  disposed 
of  according  to  law. 

No  detail  escapes  scrutiny.  Every  year  hun- 
dreds of  square  miles  of  good  farm  lands  are 
yellow  with  the  pest  of  wild  mustard.  It  was  dis- 
covered in  Germany  that  a  solution  of  iron  sul- 
phate kills  this  and  other  weeds  without  harming 
the  crops.  Now  iron  sulphate  is  a  by-product  of 
the  steel  industry,  and  in  1906  the  American 
Steel  and  Wire  Company  brought  the  German 
discovery  to  notice  in  America.  The  University 
of  Wisconsin  took  the  lead,  and,  by  a  series  of 
demonstrations,  has  succeeded  in  largely  exter- 
minating mustard  and  other  weeds,  not  only  in 
Wisconsin,  but  in  neighboring  states. 

The  dread  of  the  inland  cranberry  grower  has 
been  frost,  even  in  the  summer  months.  In  Wis- 
consin the  cranberry  industry  has  been  fostered 
by  state  appropriations,  and  has  been  under  the 
special  care  of  the  university.  By  sanding  and 
weeding  the  bogs  and  draining  them  of  excess- 
ive water,  the  experiment  stations  have  suc- 
ceeded in  keeping  them  six  to  eight  degrees 
warmer,  thus  protecting  them  against  frost  dur- 
ing July  and  August,  and  in  many  cases  making 

227 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

all  the  difference  between  the  success  of  the  crop 
and  its  utter  failure. 

Like  all  education  worthy  of  the  name,  this 
extension  work  means  more  than  a  matter  of  dol- 
lars and  cents.  It  means  that  the  farmer  wakes 
up  to  the  manifold  variety  of  the  laws  of  nature, 
their  beauty  and  their  magnificent  certainty. 
Intelligent  thrift  is  a  double  blessing.  The  story 
of  Uncle  Asa  Turner,  of  Iowa,  cannot  be  too 
often  told.  While  instructing  a  class  of  fifty  farm- 
ers in  seed-corn  judging,  Professor  Holden  no- 
ticed a  man  of  sixty  hovering  about  the  outskirts. 
Asked  if  he  would  not  join  the  class,  Uncle 
Asa  answered :  "  No,  thanks.  I  'm  too  old.  Just 
reconnoiterin'  round."  His  real  purpose,  as  he 
afterwards  confessed,  was  to  see  if  any  man 
"  could  talk  about  corn  ten  minutes  without  run- 
ning out."  Professor  Holden  insisted.  Uncle  Asa 
became  deeply  interested,  and  took  home  some 
seed  corn.  The  next  year  the  Governor  of  Iowa 
offered  a  trophy  for  the  best  ear  of  corn  in  the 
state,  and  the  man  who  had  declared  himself  too 
old  to  learn,  but  who  had  been  really  too  proud, 
won  it.  He  is  now  the  president  of  the  Iowa  Corn 
Growers'  Association.  Before  his  conversion  he 

228 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

was  tired  of  farm  life  and  was  planning  to  move 
into  town  for  the  rest  of  his  days.  Instead  he  has 
built  a  new  farmhouse  and  spends  his  declining 
years  happily  in  the  study  of  the  things  that  for 
over  half  a  century  he  had  looked  upon  with 
unseeing  and,  therefore,  weary  eyes. 

Extension  teaching  in  the  West  does  not  go  in 
for  nature  poetry.  Much  hilarity  was  caused  by 
the  news  that  an  Eastern  professor  had  described 
to  his  bearded  pupils  how  beautifully  a  clover 
folds  up  its  leaves  every  night  and  puts  them 
to  sleep  like  children.  And  it  is,  in  fact,  an  evil 
ideal  that  divorces  beauty  from  utility. 

In  nothing  is  the  admirable  spirit  of  the  ex- 
tension work  more  evident  than  in  the  fact  that 
it  includes  instruction  for  the  wives  and  daugh- 
ters of  the  farmers.  On  a  trolley  platform  at 
Ames,  Iowa,  I  fell  in  with  a  party  of  woman  visit- 
ors, who  were  making  merry  over  a  demonstra- 
tion in  cutting  and  sewing  corset  covers.  One 
of  the  instructors  had  just  admitted  to  me  that 
extension  had  failed  to  eradicate  the  farmer's 
addiction  to  pie,  but  expressed  the  modest  hope 
that  the  pie  belt  might  still  be  led  to  produce  a 
superior  and  digestible  article.  These  two  are 

229 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

sensational  extremes.  Between  them  lies  a  mean 
of  sober  utility.  I  transcribe  the  topics  of  a  short 
course  for  women,  lasting  a  single  week. 

Monday  —  Food  :  its  use  in  the  body.  Diges- 
tion :  the  daily  bill-of-fare,  illustrated  by  charts 
and  experiments.  Demonstration:  eggs  and  milk. 
Tuesday  —  Personal  hygiene.  Demonstration  : 
cooking  vegetables.  Home  decorations,  illus- 
trated. Wednesday  —  Meat :  best  and  cheapest 
cuts,  illustrated.  Serving  a. meal,  illustrated.  De- 
monstration of  the  making  of  a  kitchen  apron. 
Care  and  feeding  of  little  children.  Exhibition 
and  demonstration  of  a  baby's  outfit.  Demon- 
stration :  invalid  cooking.  Thursday  —  Home 
nursing.  Demonstration  :  making  patient's  bed  ; 
bathing  patient  in  bed  ;  giving  alcoholic  rub, 
etc.  Demonstration  :  simple  desserts.  Dress :  the 
art  of  simple  clothing ;  quiet  colors  in  dress ; 
good  material.  Demonstration  of  cutting  and  fit- 
ting shirtwaists.  Friday  —  Demonstration:  bread 
and  rolls ;  charts  showing  yeast  plants,  cross  sec- 
tion of  a  grain  of  wheat,  gluten  test,  test  of  bak- 
ing powders.  Travel.  Correct  things  to  do  when 
traveling  alone.  Conduct  in  hotels  and  sleeping 

230 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

cars.  Saturday — Laundry  work.  Removing  stains 
from  linen.  Washing  table  linens.  Washing 
woolens  and  silk.  Serving  left-overs. 

At  the  extension  short  courses  prizes  are  given 
for  over  a  score  of  household  feats,  such  as 
making  bread,  muffins,  doughnuts,  cake,  pies 
with  two  covers,  jellies,  pickles  and  preserves, 
aprons,  hemming,  stitching,  patching,  and  darn- 
ing. It  is  rigorously  provided  that  the  prizes 
"  shall  not  include  anything  that  is  fanciful  or 
not  useful,  such  as  false  teeth,  wedding  invita- 
tions, or  Teddy  bears,"  and  shall,  on  the  con- 
trary, include  washing  machines,  books,  rocking- 
chairs,  etc. 

The  latest  thing  at  Ames  is  a  movement  to 
bring  household  economics  before  women's  clubs; 
and,  Mrs.  Cobden-Sariderson  having  failed  to 
convert  our  club  women  into  suffragettes,  there 
seems  to  be  at  least  a  fighting  chance,  especially 
with  Teddy  bears  and  false  teeth  excluded  from 
the  prizes.  It  is  to  farmers'  wives,  however,  that 
the  extension  movement  appeals  most  powerfully. 
They  have  been  awakened  to  certain  very  real 
and  wholesome  rights,  and  their  husbands,  too. 

231 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

One  farmer  lately  deposed  that,  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  he  had  to  renew  his  reaper  every  six  or 
seven  years,  it  did  seem  only  fair  that  his  wife 
should  have  a  new  range  once  in  a  generation 
or  so.  Her  temper  was  better,  he  found,  and  also 
the  cooking. 

Extension  work  is,  of  course,  quite  apart  from 
college  teaching.  So  is  professional  research ;  but, 
in  order  to  get  a  clear  idea  of  agriculture  as  a 
creative  science,  it  may  be  well  to  take  a  glance 
at  the  results  research  has  achieved  before  pass- 
ing to  the  work  of  the  student.  Historically, 
indeed,  the  experiment  station  preceded  both 
college  teaching  and  extension. 

Perhaps  the  most  famous  discovery,  as  it  was 
one  of  the  very  first,  is  the  Babcock  milk  test. 
Invented  in  1890  by  the  professor  of  agricultural 
chemistry  at  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  it  shares 
with  De  Laval's  centrifugal  cream  separator  the 
credit  of  establishing  the  dairy  on  an  economic, 
cooperative  basis,  literally  creating  untold  millions 
in  every  state  in  the  Union,  in  every  country  on 
the  globe.  By  a  very  simple  appliance  and  in  a 
very  few  minutes  it  determines  the  precise  amount 
of  butter  fat  in  any  sample  of  milk.  It  thus  in- 

232 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

stantly  exposes  adulteration  by  water  or  skimming, 
putting  the  purchase  and  handling  of  milk  on  a 
basis  of  accurate  knowledge.  By  means  of  it  also 
the  richness  of  the  yield  of  each  animal  can  be 
gauged;  so  that  it  has  placed  the  feeding  and 
breeding  of  milch  cows  on  a  scientific  basis,  and 
led  to  the  development  of  a  distinct  type  of  butter- 
producing  cow. 

The  Wisconsin  curd  test  places  in  the  hands 
of  the  factory  a  means  of  detecting  milk  which 
has  been  tainted  or  rendered  defective  by  careless 
handling.  The  alkaline  tablet  test,  invented  at 
Wisconsin,  affords  an  easy  and  quick  means  of 
determining  the  development  of  acidity  in  milk 
and  cream,  and  so  of  measuring  accurately  their 
ripening.  A  description  of  a  new  process  of 
determining  the  proportion  of  casein,  the  cheese- 
producing  element  in  milk,  is  now  on  the  press. 
Hitherto  the  Babcock  butter-fat  test  has  been 
used  for  casein  also;  but  experience  has  shown 
that  casein  does  not  vary  in  proportion  to  butter 
fat,  and,  moreover,  is  not  in  itself  uniform.  A 
refined  chemical  analysis  is  prohibitively  slow  and 
expensive.  Professor  E.  B.  Hart  devised  last  sum- 
mer a  method  that  is  as  effective  as  it  is  simple. 

233 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

It  is  probable  that  this  new  test  will  enable  breed- 
ers to  develop  a  typical  cheese  cow,  as  they  have 
already  developed  a  butter  cow. 

Professor  Babcock  and  Dean  Russell  have  in- 
vented a  revolutionary  method  of  curing  Ameri- 
can cheddar  cheese.  Previous  experiments  had 
seemed  to  show  that  the  work  had  to  be  done  at 
ordinary  temperatures.  In  an  experimental  study 
of  the  different  action  of  chemical  ferments  and 
living  organisms  they  ripened  cheeses  below  the 
freezing  point  in  order  to  arrest  the  development 
of  bacteria.  To  their  surprise  they  found  that, 
covering  the  cheeses  with  a  thin  layer  of  paraffin 
shortly  after  they  were  made,  they  produced  an 
actually  better  quality  than  at  ordinary  tempera- 
tures ;  and  at  the  same  time  they  made  a  saving 
in  shrinkage,  which  alone  covered  the  increased 
cost  of  the  process.  No  innovation  has  been  more 
valuable  to  the  industry. 

In  view  of  such  results,  and  I  have  by  no  means 
exhausted  the  list,  it  is  not  strange  that  Wisconsin 
has  come  to  place  confidence  in  its  university. 
The  hand  of  progress  has  been  laid  even  on  the 
local  milkman.  At  irregular  intervals  an  officer 
stops  the  wagon  on  its  rounds,  buys  a  quart  of 

234 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

milk,  analyzes  it,  and  publishes  the  result  in  the 
local  paper,  so  that  every  householder  knows  just 
what  he  is  buying.  Purchasers  of  pure-bred  cows 
have  learned  by  experience  to  prefer  official  uni- 
versity tests  to  the  individual  tests  of  the  breeders, 
so  that  the  university  has  gained  a  vast  influence 
with  the  stockmen.  It  has  laid  especial  emphasis 
on  community  breeding,  and  associations  have 
been  formed  in  various  districts,  each  concen- 
trating its  energies  on  a  single  breed.  There  are 
several  Guernsey  centres ;  and  Lake  Mills,  a  Hoi- 
stein  centre,  annually  ships  pure-bred  stock  to 
the  value  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars. 
Largely  as  a  result  of  university  control,  Wiscon- 
sin has  become  one  of  the  most  important  breed- 
ing centres  of  the  country. 

The  college  at  Ames,  Iowa,  has  made  very 
interesting  and  valuable  experiments  in  the  feed- 
ing of  stock  to  be  slaughtered.  Of  the  total 
number  of  hogs  received  at  the  Union  Stock 
Yards,  Chicago,  the  greatest  hog  market  in  the 
world,  Iowa  furnishes  more  than  one  half. 

A  miller  who  was  found  running  corn  hulls 
into  his  wheat  bran  answered  a  protest  with  the 
remark :  "  What  does  a  farmer  know  about  pro- 

235 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

tein!"  Thanks  to  a  bulletin,  25,000  of  which 
were  distributed  by  the  state  college,  the  intelli- 
gent farmer  now  knows  a  good  deal  about  pro- 
tein. He  knows  just  what  is  in  the  commercial 
feedstuffs,  and  how  to  make  his  own  mixtures, 
whether  for  the  purpose  of  producing  work  from 
a  horse,  milk  or  meat  from  cattle,  or  wool  from 
sheep. 

The  Iowa  bulletin  on  condimental  stock  foods 
and  tonics,  issued  last  January,  is  hilarious  read- 
ing, even  for  the  layman.  Nearly  every  drug 
store  and  feed  store,  in  addition  to  numerous  and 
indefatigable  agents,  was  selling  these  wares. 
They  advertised  to  cure  the  thousand  natural  ills 
which  stock  is  heir  to,  including  Texas  fever, 
which  is  caused  by  a  tick,  and  tuberculosis,  which 
is  caused  by  a  germ.  Their  claims  read  like  an 
intended  parody  of  patent  medicine  advertising. 

Experiment  showed,  of  course,  that  all  these 
claims  were  groundless.  As  foods  the  prepara- 
tions were  mediocre,  and  the  drugs  in  them  were 
either  without  effect  or  of  the  most  familiar 
kind.  One  mysterious  fact  remained,  however. 
Cattle  were  most  unmistakably  eager  for  condi- 
mental mixtures.  But  even  this  yielded  to  chem- 

236 


THE   FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

ical  analysis.  It  was  found  that  in  one  hundred 
pounds  of  mixture  there  was  often  as  high  as 
eighty-five  pounds  of  salt. 

I  found  one  professor  at  Ames  experimenting 
on  a  cart  wheel  having  such  finely-adjusted  ball 
bearings  that  with  a  single  whirl  it  would  revolve 
ten  minutes,  whereas  an  ordinary  wheel  will  re- 
volve only  two  or  three  times.  A  prominent  firm 
was  selling  wagons  equipped  with  it  for  large 
prices,  its  agents  claiming  that  it  eliminated  forty 
per  cent  of  the  draft.  Now,  as  it  happens,  the 
total  friction  in  the  bearing  of  the  wheel  of  an 
ordinary  farm  wagon  is  only  about  four  per  cent 
of  the  draft.  But  this  professor  was  working 
out  his  problem  with  delicate  and  elaborate  appa- 
ratus, and  at  the  expense  of  weeks  of  labor. 
Scientific  accuracy  of  statement  is  the  first  essen- 
tial. 

One  of  the  problems  he  had  in  store  was  a  two- 
wheel  windmill,  in  which  the  flukes  of  the  second 
wheel  caught  the  wind  as  it  glanced  from  the 
first.  The  claim  was  that  the  second  wheel  did 
more  work  than  the  first,  and  that  the  two  to- 
gether produced  double  power.  As  to  the  second 
wheel  the  claim  was  probably  true,  the  professor 

237 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

said;  for,  according  to  his  guess,  the  wind  backed 
up  from  it  so  as  to  exert  little  or  no  power  on 
the  first.  It  was  by  no  means  certain  that  the  two 
wheels  produced  more  power  than  one.  One  of 
the  most  interesting  of  his  experiments  was  with 
the  comparative  value  of  gasoline  and  denatured 
alcohol  for  heat,  light,  and  fuel:  contrary  to 
expectation,  it  appeared  that,  at  their  prevailing 
prices,  gasoline  produces  far  better  results  in  all 
respects. 

Very  interesting  experiments  in  breeding  are 
under  way.  The  leading  types  of  draft  horses  are 
now  imported  from  France  and  England.  Pro- 
fessor W.  J.  Kennedy  spent  last  summer  abroad 
purchasing  horses  from  which  he  hopes  to  pro- 
duce a  breed  acclimated  to  the  country,  and 
adapted  to  our  special  American  conditions. 
Long-horn  cattle  are  excellent  meat-producers; 
but  their  horns  make  them  hard  to  handle  in  the 
barn  and  dangerous  to  one  another.  Professor 
Kennedy  is  endeavoring,  by  an  admixture  of 
polled  cattle,  to  remove  their  horns  without  im- 
pairing their  value  as  meat-producers.  One  of  the 
problems  of  sheep-raising  on  our  Western  ranges 
lies  in  the  fact  that  sometimes  the  leading  de- 

238 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

mand  is  for  wool  and  sometimes  for  mutton.  By 
combining  the  British  Southdown  with  the  Me- 
rino and  other  breeds  from  France,  Professor 
Kennedy  hopes  to  produce  a  breed  that  can  be 
used  at  need  either  for  meat  or  wool. 

Some  years  ago  the  colleges  began  showing 
their  stock  at  the  international  shows  held  in 
Chicago.  The  men  who  made  a  business  of 
breeding  laughed  at  the  idea  that  college  pro- 
fessors had  anything  to  teach  them.  In  the 
last  seven  contests,  judged  by  Englishmen  and 
Scotchmen,  the  colleges  have  won  four  grand 
championships  for  steers  —  Iowa  in  1902,  Ne- 
braska in  1903,  Minnesota  in  1904,  and  Iowa  in 
1905.  In  1906  Iowa  owned  the  grand  champion, 
though  it  was  exhibited  by  its  former  owner.  In 
swine  the  results  are  equally  good,  Iowa  having 
taken  the  grand  championship  three  times  and 
Ohio  once,  while  Iowa  has  taken  fifty  per  cent 
of  all  prize  money.  In  sheep  Wisconsin  has  won 
two  grand  championships  in  the  seven  years,  and 
always  a  heavy  share  of  the  prizes.  The  profes- 
sional breeders  no  longer  laugh  at  the  professors. 
Quite  the  contrary,  they  have  protested  against 
competition  from  them  as  unfair  to  the  mere 

239 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

business  man.  But  more  liberal  counsels  are  pre- 
vailing, the  verdict  being  that  the  purpose  of  the 
shows  is  to  exhibit  the  best  types  of  stock  from 
whatever  source.  The  colleges  are  just  beginning 
to  show  horses. 

As  a  result  of  all  this  extension  and  experi- 
mental work  there  has  of  late  years  been  a  rapid 
increase  in  the  number  of  students  in  the  colleges. 
At  Wisconsin,  for  example,  the  four-year  course, 
leading  to  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Agricul- 
tural Science,  which  for  many  years  was  sparsely 
attended,  last  year  enrolled  one  hundred  and 
forty-two  students.  For  two  years  the  studies  are 
prescribed,  and  include  chemistry,  physics,  bio- 
logy, and  botany;  mathematics,  English,  and  Ger- 
man. In  the  junior  year  agricultural  chemistry, 
soils,  and  bacteriology  are  prescribed;  but  the 
larger  portion  of  the  work  is  elective.  In  the 
senior  year  all  studies  are  elective,  so  that  the 
student  can  prepare  himself  for  whatever  field  he 
may  choose. 

The  graduates  of  the  four-year  course  easily 
find  positions  in  the  government  bureaus  at 
Washington,  in  the  agricultural  colleges,  and  in 
the  practical  management  of  large  farms.  At 

240 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

Iowa  I  was  told  that  the  average  salary  of  grad- 
uates in  twenty-six  state  colleges  and  experiment 
stations  was  sixteen  hundred  dollars,  the  lowest 
being  eight  hundred  dollars.  The  highest  was 
no  less  than  ten  thousand  dollars,  and,  after  ten 
years  of  service,  there  was  a  guaranteed  pension 
of  five  thousand  dollars  a  year.  This  was  for  a 
position  under  the  British  Government  in  Cal- 
cutta. The  man  who  secured  it  was  only  twenty- 
four  years  old  when  he  graduated  last  year;  but 
before  going  to  Ames  he  had  received  the  degree 
of  B.  A.  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh  and  of 
Ph.  D.  at  Leipsic.  About  eighty  per  cent  of  the 
agricultural  students  of  the  Iowa  State  College, 
I  was  told,  go  back  to  the  farm,  often  refusing 
salaried  positions  of  twelve  hundred  dollars  to 
fifteen  hundred  dollars  to  start  with. 

These  figures  compare  exceedingly  well  with 
the  earnings  of  engineers,  of  which  the  public 
holds  an  exaggerated  notion.  Some  years  ago 
one  of  the  classes  of  the  Massachusetts  Institute 
of  Technology  gathered,  at  its  fifteenth  anniver- 
sary, statistics  of  the  earnings  of  its  members. 
In  spite  of  the  fact  that  several  had  made  them- 
selves multimillionaires,  the  average  was  less  than 

241 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

three  thousand  dollars.  As  most  engineers  are 
subject  to  the  expenses  of  city  life,  it  is  probable 
that  the  net  returns  to  agricultural  graduates  are 
very  considerably  greater. 

Realizing  the  necessity  of  making  a  special 
appeal  to  farm  boys  who,  for  the  lack  of  time 
or  of  money,  could  not  take  the  four-year  course, 
the  University  of  Wisconsin  offered,  in  1885,  a 
two-year  course,  the  first  of  the  kind  in  the  coun- 
try. For  nine  years  this  consisted  of  terms  of 
twelve  weeks  in  the  dead  of  winter.  In  1894  it 
was  increased  to  two  terms  of  fourteen  weeks 
each.  This  course,  as  Dean  Russell  has  said  in  a 
recent  letter  to  the  University  Regents,  was  long 
ridiculed,  on  the  one  hand  by  the  farmers,  who 
scoffed  at  studying  agriculture  from  books,  and 
on  the  other  by  the  universities,  including  land- 
grant  colleges  of  agriculture,  as  an  unworthy 
departure  from  the  university  ideal.  But  for 
twenty  years  it  has  justified  itself  splendidly, 
growing  steadily  and  rapidly  from  18  students  in 
1886  to  327  in  1906. 

Of  the  1098  out  of  1174  graduates  of  this 
short  course  from  whom  reports  could  be  secured, 
more  than  half,  or  558,  are  now  engaged  in  general 

242 


THE  FARMER'S  AWAKENING 

farming;  363  are  specialized  farmers,  including 
breeders,  dairymen,  and  seedmen ;  twenty-six  are 
farm  superintendents  and  managers,  twenty  veter- 
inarians, and  twenty  specialists  in  college  experi- 
ment stations  and  the  national  Department  of 
Agriculture.  Only  111,  or  ten  per  cent,  have 
taken  to  other  vocations  than  agriculture. 

It  is  still  true  that  the  farm  boy  may  aspire  to 
rise  above  the  station  of  his  father.  It  is,  in  fact, 
magnificently  true ;  for  to-day  the  way  of  advance- 
ment lies,  of  necessity,  through  an  education  that 
makes  him  not  only  a  more  effective  producer, 
but  a  broader,  a  deeper,  and  a  happier  man. 


VIII 

THE  SMALL  COLLEGE  VERSUS  THE 
UNIVERSITY 

WHY  neglect  the  small  college  ?  Is  it  not 
doing  a  work  that  never  has  been  and 
cannot  be  done  by  the  university  ?  Are  not  the 
influences  of  a  compact,  well-organized  commun- 
ity more  powerful  on  the  individual  than  those 
of  a  vast,  multifarious  institution,  however  ad- 
vanced ?  Is  not  character-building  more  vital  to 
the  nation  than  science  ?  The  cry  has  long  been 
familiar.  While  the  foregoing  chapters  were  ap- 
pearing serially,  I  received  many  letters  inviting 
attention  to  the  virtues  of  particular  small  colleges. 
The  issue  had  not  been  wholly  overlooked. 
Wisconsin,  Michigan,  Cornell,  and  Harvard  were 
all  criticised  for  their  failure  in  the  humanities. 
Chicago  escaped  censure  only  because,  a  large 
proportion  of  its  students  being  residents  of  the 
city,  it  cannot  take  a  firm  hold  upon  the  life  of 
the  individual.  Princeton,  which,  of  all  the  insti- 

244 


THE   SMALL   COLLEGE 

tutions  reviewed,  bends  its  energies  most  ably  and 
insistently  toward  the  development  of  character, 
and  the  ideal  and  scope  of  which  are  essentially 
collegiate,  was  cited  as  having,  in  appearance  at 
least,  abandoned  its  proper  field  by  assuming  the 
grandiose  title  of  university.  I  now  propose  a 
frank  and,  I  hope,  a  sympathetic  examination  of 
the  claim  of  the  small  college.  If  it  proves  well 
founded,  nothing  could  be  more  fortunate  for 
American  education. 

In  an  article  on  "  Harvard  and  the  Individual," 
Dean  Briggs  once  suggested  that  the  small  col- 
leges proclaim  the  advantages  of  smallness  only 
in  order  to  become  bigger.  Perhaps  his  satire 
was  edged  by  the  fact  that  Harvard's  neighbor, 
Dartmouth,  now  numbers  well  over  a  thousand 
students  —  within  two  hundred  of  as  many  as 
Princeton  —  and  is  yearly  diverting  a  larger 
number  of  freshmen  from  Cambridge.  Yet  the 
fact  remains  that  only  one  small  college,  Wil- 
liams, has  ever  seriously  discussed  limiting  its  size. 
Ten  years  ago  the  project  caused  much  favorable 
comment.  But  to-day  if  you  ask  the  trustees  how 
the  experiment  is  prospering,  they  answer,  some- 
what curtly,  that  it  never  was  tried. 

245 


THE   SMALL   COLLEGE 

It  is  in  the  West,  however,  that  the  problem 
is  most  vital.  There  the  ideal  of  the  small  col- 
lege is  beset  with  a  double  danger.  Many  institu- 
tions with  less  than  half  the  students  and  only  a 
small  fraction  of  the  equipment  of  Princeton,  or 
even  of  Dartmouth,  have  abandoned  the  collegi- 
ate ideal  to  assume  the  name  and  the  work  of  a 
university.  The  head  of  Western  Eeserve  has 
been  called  the  foremost  university  president  in 
Ohio ;  and  the  malice  of  the  phrase  is  not  with- 
out warrant,  for  this  single  state  has  more  insti- 
tutions aiming  at  the  highest  rank  than  the  whole 
of  Germany,  where  the  university  has  reached  its 
broadest  development.  The  true  universities  of 
the  West,  on  the  other  hand,  —  the  state  univer- 
sities,— have  as  yet  been  prevented  by  their  youth, 
their  lack  of  *  traditions  and  endowment,  from 
developing  the  personal  and  social  —  the  distinct- 
ively collegiate  —  side  of  undergraduate  life. 
Nowhere  is  the  need  of  the  presumed  virtues  of 
the  small  college  as  pressing  as  in  the  West,  or 
its  opportunities  as  great. 

The  General  Education  Board,  which  pays 
particular  attention  to  the  small  college,  has 
lately  stamped  Knox  College,  at  Galesburg,  Illi- 

246 


"  THE  WAY  TO  KNOX,"  KNOX  COLLEGE,  GALESBURG,  ILL, 


VERSUS  THE   UNIVERSITY 

nois,  and  Beloit  College,  at  Beloit,  Wisconsin, 
as  standard  in  their  respective  districts.  The 
aim  of  the  small  college  has  seldom  been  as  forci- 
bly and  explicitly  expressed  as  in  the  catalogue 
of  Knox  College.  "  While  in  scholarship  and 
methods  its  aim  is  to  maintain  its  place  with 
the  best  institutions  of  the  day  .  .  .  [Knox] 
still  holds  to  the  old-established  and  significant 
ideals ;  it  still  tries  to  lay  the  foundation  of  its 
educational  plans  on  the  rock-bottom  principles 
of  integrity,  of  hard  work,  of  manly  and  womanly 
character.  .  .  .  The  earnest  moral  and  Christian 
spirit  of  the  founders  is  cherished  as  the  most 
sacred  heritage  of  the  institution  and  its  most 
vital  educational  force."  The  ideal  of  Beloit  is 
precisely  similar :  "  To  teach  the  heart  as  well 
as  the  mind,  and  to  give  personal  care  that  shall 
reach  the  individual  needs  of  every  student." 

Mere  smallness,  it  is  obvious,  cannot  achieve 
such  an  ideal.  Two  factors  are  necessary,  a  fac- 
ulty capable  of  exerting  a  strong  personal  influ- 
ence on  the  minds  and  morals  of  the  undergrad- 
uates, and  a  student  body  inspired  and  permeated 
by  high  standards  of  character  and  conduct. 

As  regards  the  influence  of  the  faculty  (neg- 
247 


THE  SMALL   COLLEGE 

lecting  for  the  moment  the  question  of  its 
methods  and  its  ability),  we  may  expect  to  find 
it  strong  in  institutions  in  which  the  proportion 
of  students  to  teachers  is  small.  With  the  best 
of  intentions  there  are  limits  beyond  which  no 
man  can  exert  his  personality.  Knox  College, 
according  to  its  latest  catalogue,  had  224  stu- 
dents and  a  faculty  of  19,  or  11.8  students  to 
one  teacher.  Beloit  had  322  students  and  a  fac- 
ulty of  35,  or  9.2  to  one.  Each  college,  however, 
has  an  affiliated  academy  receiving  instruction 
from  the  faculty,  and  the  advantage  of  Beloit  is 
diminished  by  the  fact  that  its  academy  students 
number  178  to  82  at  Knox.  Including  the  acad- 
emies, the  proportion  for  Knox  is  16.1  to  one; 
for  Beloit  14.28  to  one.  The  students  in  the 
academy,  however,  receive  less  personal  attention 
than  those  in  the  college ;  so  that  it  is  only  fair 
to  reduce  the  proportion  —  let  us  say  to  14  to 
one  for  Knox  and  13  to  one  for  Beloit.  As 
against  this,  the  University  of  Michigan  has  only 
12.9  students  to  one  teacher,  and  the  University 
of  Wisconsin  10.48  to  one. 

In  the  East,  it  may  be  remarked  in  passing, 
the  small  colleges  are  at  a  similar  disadvantage. 

248 


VERSUS   THE   UNIVERSITY 

Amherst  has  11.3  students,  and  Williams  9.6,  to 
each  teacher;  while  Yale  has  8.47,  Princeton  8.2, 
and  Harvard  only  7.2.  In  comparison  with  the 
Western  university,  it  is  true,  the  Eastern  small 
college  has  a  slight  advantage;  but,  turning  the 
tables,  we  find  that  the  Western  small  college 
has  almost  twice  as  many  students  to  each  teacher 
as  the  Eastern  university. 

If  the  faculties  of  small  colleges  excel,  it  must 
obviously  be  by  virtue  of  methods  and  abilities 
vastly  better  fitted  "  to  teach  the  heart  as  well  as 
the  mind  and  to  give  personal  care  that  shall 
reach  the  needs  of  every  student." 

In  our  universities  there  is  certainly  room  for 
a  vast  increase  of  personal  instruction.  Where 
the  German  ideal  prevails,  as  at  Yale,  and  espe- 
cially at  Harvard,  the  professors'  time  and  ener- 
gies are  largely  given  to  original  research,  quite 
apart  from  teaching;  and  when  they  teach  they 
do  not  come  into  personal  relations  with  their 
pupils  except  in  advanced  and  highly  specialized 
courses,  for  upperclassmen  and  graduates.  Even 
there  the  relations  are  of  scholar  to  scholar  rather 
than  of  man  to  man.  In  the  general  courses, 
which  make  up  a  very  great  part  of  the  work  of 

249 


THE  SMALL  COLLEGE 

a  vast  majority  of  the  undergraduates,  the  attend- 
ance is  large,  frequently  mounting  into  the  hun- 
dreds, and  the  means  of  instruction  is  nothing 
more  personal  than  a  formal  lecture. 

Now  the  university  lecture  is  a  survival  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  when,  books  being  few  and  pro- 
hibitively dear,  the  only  feasible  way  of  impart- 
ing knowledge  was  by  word  of  mouth.  The  lec- 
ture was>  in  fact  as  in  etymology,  a  mere  reading, 
the  students  copying  it  word  for  word.  The 
modern  lecture,  even  at  its  best,  offers  little  more 
scope  for  personal  influence  on  character ;  and 
our  university  professors,  being  chosen  as  scien- 
tists rather  than  as  teachers,  are  seldom  accom- 
plished lecturers.  Many  of  them  frankly  scorn 
the  art  of  the  platform.  At  Harvard,  for  exam- 
ple, in  fully  half  the  general  courses,  a  student 
who  knows  how  to  use  a  library  would  gain  tune 
by  spending  the  lecture  hour  in  reading;  and 
nothing  prevents  many  from  doing  so  except  the 
rigorously  enforced  rule  against  absences. 

How  far  have  the  small  colleges  escaped  from 
this  melancholy  predicament?  At  Knox  one  lec- 
ture I  heard,  on  early  New  England  literature, 
was  a  mere  mediaeval  reading,  every  phrase  being 

250 


VERSUS  THE   UNIVERSITY 

uttered  twice  or  thrice  and  laboriously  copied. 
The  explanation  was  that  there  was  no  textbook 
on  the  subject;  but  surely  the  printing  press,  or 
at  the  worst  the  mimeograph,  offers  a  cheap 
enough  escape  from  this  soulless  drudgery.  And 
for  students  of  literature  are  not  real  books  pre- 
ferable to  textbooks?  It  was  comforting  to  hear 
that  this  reading  was  the  only  one  of  the  kind  at 
Knox.  At  both  Knox  and  Beloit  a  large  part  of 
the  instruction  is  by  recitation  from  stated  lessons 
in  textbooks,  a  method  obsolescent  or  obsolete 
in  our  leading  universities.  An  even  larger  part 
of  the  instruction  is  by  lecture. 

One  great  advantage  both  colleges  possess, 
and  they  are  intelligently  making  the  most  of  it. 
The  classes  are  small  enough  to  permit  personal 
relations  between  teachers  and  taught.  "  Quiz 
sections,"  in  which  the  work  of  the  course  is 
reviewed  by  viva  voce  examination  and  discus- 
sion, are  an  important  part  of  the  method.  In  the 
more  advanced  and  smaller  courses  a  dozen  or  so 
students  gather  with  the  instructor  about  a  table 
and  proceed  by  intimate  and  personal  discussion. 
These  methods  are  ideal.  The  object  of  educa- 
tion is  to  make  men  think,  of  culture  to  make 

251 


THE   SMALL  COLLEGE 

them  feel.  In  a  philosophy  class  I  attended  at 
Knox  and  a  literature  class  at  Beloit  the  results, 
it  seemed  to  me,  left  little  to  be  desired. 

On  the  whole,  however,  it  can  scarcely  be  said 
that  these  two  typical  small  colleges  have  made 
any  notable  advance  in  the  matter  of  personal 
instruction.  The  universities  everywhere,  as  we 
have  seen,  are  tending  to  revert  to  the  earlier 
collegiate  ideal  with  which  historically  they  be- 
gan, and  to  blend  it  with  that  of  the  university. 
Wisconsin  is  dividing  its  larger  courses  into  more 
wieldy  units,  and  both  Wisconsin  and  Michigan 
have  long  had  quiz  sections.  At  institutions  of 
the  type  of  Harvard  the  large  proportion  of 
teachers  to  taught  gives  scope,  in  the  distinctively 
university  courses,  to  a  vast  amount  of  personal 
instruction  in  laboratory  and  seminar.  Even  the 
large  lecture  courses  are  supplemented  by  per- 
sonal conferences.  Princeton,  true  to  the  collegi- 
ate ideal,  has  thrown  the  weight  of  its  numbers 
into  the  tutorial,  or  so-called  preceptorial,  sys- 
tem, powerfully  supplementing  and  vitalizing  the 
large  lecture  course.  Many  of  these  features,  and 
especially  the  tutor,  who  is  the  acme  and  ideal 
of  humanistic  teaching,  are  obviously  beyond  the 

252 


VERSUS   THE   UNIVERSITY 

powers  of  the  hard-worked  faculties  of  our  small 
colleges. 

Even  on  the  question  of  the  elective  system 
our  two  small  colleges  have  taken  no  decided 
stand.  Allowing  for  the  difference  in  entrance 
requirements,  Beloit  offers  almost  as  great  free- 
dom —  though,  of  course,  not  the  same  scope  — 
as  Harvard  and  Yale ;  while  Knox,  in  spite  of  its 
championship  of  the  "rock-bottom  principle  of 
hard  work,"  is  less  severe  in  its  prescription  of 
courses  than  Princeton.  As  it  happens,  Beloit, 
in  addition  to  a  slight  superiority  in  its  teaching 
force,  is  decidedly  superior  in  laboratories,  library, 
and  general  equipment.  It  is  by  no  means  im- 
probable that  if  Knox  were  as  well  equipped  it 
would  be  as  unrestricted  in  the  matter  of  elect- 
ives. 

If  the  collegiate  ideal  flourishes  in  these  insti- 
tutions, it  must,  pretty  clearly,  be  in  their  general 
life. 

Beloit  enjoys  all  natural  advantages.  The  city 
has  only  twelve  thousand  inhabitants,  and  the 
college  is  separated  from  it  by  the  broad  and 
beautiful  waters  of  Rock  River.  The  campus  lies 
on  the  edge  of  a  bluff  overlooking  the  valley; 

253 


THE   SMALL  COLLEGE 

the  country  round  is  gently  rolling  and  studded 
with  groves  of  prairie  oak.  Without  being  wholly 
removed  from  the  world,  the  college  is  seques- 
tered and  its  life  concentrated.  Founded  in  1845, 
it  has  grown  steadily  in  wealth  and  traditions. 
In  size  it  is  ideal  —  237  men  and  85  women.  No 
purely  collegiate  institution  in  the  West  is  more 
aptly  situated  for  the  development  of  a  sound 
college  life  and  spirit. 

Its  success  has  not  been  complete  in  all  re- 
spects. The  size  of  professorial  salaries  and  the 
ever-present  servant  problem  make  against  the 
attempt  to  bring  the  undergraduates  into  social 
relations  with  the  Faculty.  The  wife  of  one  of 
the  Faculty  leaders  told  me  that  for  three  years 
she  had  given  a  series  of  small  dinners,  including 
the  entire  freshman  class.  One  year  she  had  been 
obliged  to  cook  the  dinners  as  well  as  preside 
at  them.  The  first  year  only  three  per  cent  of 
her  guests  ever  came  to  her  house  again,  and, 
though  remonstrance  improved  the  showing,  she 
was  not  encouraged  to  continue.  There  remains, 
however,  an  association  of  Faculty  ladies,  which 
has  been  successful  in  getting  the  students  to 
call  for  tea. 

254 


VERSUS  THE   UNIVERSITY 

In  the  chosen  student  activities,  however, 
Beloit  has  had  marked  success.  In  athletics  — 
that  sure  index  of  the  health  of  college  spirit  — 
it  has  always  been  prominent.  In  the  bad  old 
days,  when  the  imported  athlete  was  rampant 
throughout  the  West,  it  put  forth  what  is  known 
as  a  scrappy  team,  often  fighting  on  equal  terms 
with  the  state  universities.  To-day  it  is  pure  - 
and  more  moderately  successful. 

Debating  and  oratory  are  scarcely  less  prized 
than  athletics.  Courses  are  given  on  declamation, 
the  forms  of  public  address,  oratorical  master- 
pieces, debating,  and  extempore  speaking.  Two 
literary  societies,  the  Cliosophic  and  the  Delian, 
debate  weekly.  Every  year  the  colleges  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley  hold  contests  in  public  speak- 
ing. In  debating  Beloit  has  won  more  victories 
than  any  of  its  rivals,  and  in  oratory  it  has  won 
three  times  as  many  victories  and  four  times  as 
much  prize  money. 

A  democratic  student  association,  the  Archaean 
Union,  fosters  not  only  oratory  and  debating,  but 
the  general  literary  interests  of  the  college,  in- 
cluding the  publication  of  a  weekly  paper  and 
the  maintenance  of  a  reading-room.  Out  of  the 

255 


THE  SMALL   COLLEGE 

322  students  last  year,  276  paid  the  annual  fee 
of  one  dollar.  The  more  purely  literary  interests 
of  the  college  are  fostered  by  an  English  club, 
which  holds  thirteen  meetings  yearly,  the  average 
attendance  of  which  is  thirty-five,  and  by  a  Shake- 
speare society,  limited  to  the  young  women. 

Beloit  holds  strongly  for  self-government  — 
under  control  of  the  Faculty.  At  the  time  of 
my  visit  the  eleven  had  not  been  giving  a  good 
account  of  itself;  and  it  became  known  that  a 
certain  player  had  flagrantly  broken  training. 
One  morning  in  chapel  the  Dean  spoke  briefly 
but  pointedly  to  the  student  body,  making  it  clear 
that,  if  the  team  and  the  college  wished  to  retain 
the  services  of  the  offender,  his  offenses  must 
cease.  Even  the  college  papers  profit  by  the 
Dean's  watchful  eye.  There  had  been  a  Beloit 
banquet  in  Milwaukee,  and  the  alumni  had  be- 
haved badly,  abandoning  the  undergraduates  and 
flocking  by  themselves  to  the  theatre.  The  col- 
lege editor  was  for  scoring  them  roundly;  but 
the  Dean  prevailed  upon  him  to  deal  gently  with 
the  erring  grad.  Clearly  those  words  in  the  cata- 
logue about  individual  needs  and  personal  care 
are  not  altogether  vain. 

256 


VERSUS  THE  UNIVERSITY 

Associated  with  the  Dean  is  a  cabinet  of  seven 
undergraduates,  three  seniors,  two  juniors,  one 
sophomore,  and  one  freshman.  Its  function  is  to 
suggest  and  promote  methods  for  making  col- 
lege work  more  effective  and  college  life  more 
attractive ;  and  it  has  met  with  marked  success. 
Examinations  are  held  under  the  honor  system, 
administered  by  a  judicial  committee  of  nine  un- 
dergraduates of  all  classes.  There  has  been  some 
cheating,  for  it  is  hard  to  create  a  high  standard 
where  none  has  existed.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Faculty  has  been  slow  to  meet  the  logic  of  the 
situation  by  trusting  the  students  absolutely. 
But,  on  the  whole,  the  system  is  said  to  work  well. 

The  sense  of  social  responsibility  extends  into 
almost  every  phase  of  undergraduate  life.  When 
the  freshman  arrives  at  Beloit  he  is  met  at  the 
train  by  friendly  upperclassmen,  who  escort  him 
to  his  quarters  and  teach  him  to  box  the  local 
compass.  On  the  first  Friday  of  term  time  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  each  holds  a 
reception  to- newcomers.  On  the  second  Friday 
the  two  associations  hold  a  joint  reception,  with 
refreshments.  Every  one  present,  including  mem- 
bers of  the  Faculty,  wears  his  name  on  a  tag  in 

257 


THE   SMALL   COLLEGE 

his  buttonhole,  and  it  is  assumed  that  all  are  ac- 
quainted. There  is  a  grand  march  by  classes,  and, 
to  insure  a  thorough  mixing,  senior  men  pair 
with  freshmen  women  (if  the  expression  be  per- 
mitted), and  freshmen  men  with  senior  women. 

Last  year  the  Dean  and  his  cabinet  instituted 
a  new  general  function,  Big  Hill  Day,  which 
promises  to  become  as  popular  as  it  is  picturesque. 
In  the  soft  season  of  Indian  summer,  when  the 
oak  leaves  are  fading  from  dull,  rich  crimson  to 
a  dusty  purple  bloom,  the  whole  college  assem- 
bles at  the  hill  for  one  large  family  picnic.  Eat- 
ables are  provided  by  means  of  an  assessment  of 
twenty-five  cents  a  head.  There  is  a  baseball 
game  between  the  young  women  and  the  Faculty, 
and  each  class  provides  a  stunt  for  the  general 
entertainment. 

Last  autumn,  to  the  bewilderment  of  the  spec- 
tators, three  ranks  of  men,  eight  broad,  marched 
out  of  the  woods,  and,  wheeling,  faced  the  audi- 
ence. Behind  them  stood  the  inventor  of  the 
stunt,  and  at  one  end  a  helper  worked  the  arm 
of  one  of  the  performers  like  a  pump.  The  whole, 
it  developed,  presented  a  vocal  octave,  with  three 
voices  to  each  note.  While  the  pumper  pumped, 

258 


VERSUS  THE  UNIVERSITY 

the  inventor,  an  undergraduate  organist,  pressed 
on  the  heads  of  now  one  row  and  now  another. 
The  result  was  a  series  of  college  songs  that  smote 
the  welkin.  Advanced  vaudeville  please  copy. 

On  the  whole,  the  life  at  Beloit  presents  a 
bright  contrast  to  that  at  our  universities,  Eastern 
or  Western.  A  recent  graduate  who  went  to  Har- 
vard to  continue  his  studies  was  asked  if  the 
university  had  extended  the  glad  hand.  "  They 
extended  it,"  he  replied,  "  to  receive  what  they 
call  a  bond,  securing  them  against  failure  to  pay 
my  term  bills.  I  had  n't  known  it  was  necessary, 
and  the  glad  hand  turned  to  the  frosty  mitt." 

At  Knox  the  general  student  life  is  a  trifle 
less  fortunate.  Galesburg  is  several  thousands 
larger  than  Beloit,  and  the  college  lies  at  the 
heart  of  it.  Both  Faculty  and  students  are  hope- 
lessly scattered. 

And  Knox  is  relentlessly  hard-working.  At 
Beloit  it  is  said  that  forty  per  cent  of  the  stu- 
dents earn  their  way  through  college  in  whole  or 
in  part.  At  a  Faculty  meeting  I  attended  it  was 
reported  that  a  certain  student  had  been  absent 
for  over  a  week.  It  appeared  that  he  was  a  piano 
tuner  and  had  been  obliged  to  go  forth  to  earn 

259 


THE  SMALL  COLLEGE 

money  to  pay  his  bills.  At  Knox,  thanks  to  the 
greater  opportunities  of  the  city,  sixty-five  per 
cent  of  the  students  are  wholly  or  in  part  self- 
supporting.  They  are  reporters  and  newspaper 
correspondents,  clerks  in  clothing  stores,  waiters 
in  restaurants;  in  many  cases  they  do  chores  in 
return  for  board  and  lodging.  Athletics  flourish, 
and  societies  for  the  cultivation  of  oratory,  debat- 
ing, and  literature  ;  there  are  receptions,  teas,  and 
picnics  as  at  Beloit.  But  success  in  these  student 
activities  is  less  marked. 

As  against  this,  the  moral  life  at  Knox  is 
extraordinarily  strong  and  austere.  Founded  in 
1837  by  a  colony  of  fervent  Christians  from  west- 
ern New  York,  the  spirit  of  the  fathers  has  been 
only  slightly  affected  by  modern  luxury  and  free 
thought.  The  small  Faculty  copes  with  its  task 
of  personal  instruction  in  a  spirit  truly  heroic. 
Graduates  of  Eastern  institutions  though  many 
of  them  are,  and  alien  in  traditions  to  the  stren- 
uous life  of  the  West,  their  loyalty  to  the  college 
and  interest  in  the  vital  work  it  is  doing  has,  in 
several  cases,  led  them  to  refuse  higher  salaries 
elsewhere. 

As  for  the  moral  life  of  the  undergraduates, 
260 


VERSUS  THE   UNIVERSITY 

the  only  difficulty  is  to  make  a  true  account  of 
it  credible.  At  both  Beloit  and  Knox  chapel  is 
compulsory.  Instead  of  preceding  the  day's  work, 
as  is  the  custom  in  the  East,  it  comes  just  before 
noon,  and  is  thus  robbed  of  many  of  its  terrors. 
But  even  this  will  not  account  for  the  fact  that 
at  Knox  chapel  seems  to  be  heartily  enjoyed.  At 
Beloit  drinking  is  rare  and  smoking  prohibited 
on  the  campus.  At  Knox  both  are  all  but  un- 
known. One  student  of  cosmopolitan  travel  told 
me  that  in  Europe  he  took  wine  with  his  meals, 
but  at  Knox  would  never  dream  of  going  into  a 
barroom. 

I  was  told  that  a  certain  one  of  the  fraternities 
was  inclined  to  be  fast.  This  reputation,  as  its 
members  regretfully  admitted,  was  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  year  before  two  of  the  men,  since 
graduated,  had  resorted  to  the  bar  of  the  Union 
Hotel.  In  some  mysterious  manner  the  lady  who 
holds  the  office  of  registrar  is  minutely  informed 
of  all  the  shortcomings  of  the  students,  and  es- 
pecially of  their  long  goings.  The  guilty  fra- 
ternity assured  me  that  it  was  doing  its  best 
to  live  down  its  reputation.  At  the  two  other 
fraternity  houses  no  one  had  smoked.  Here  I 

261 


THE   SMALL   COLLEGE 

ventured  the  postprandial  weed.  With  hospitable 
tact  the  senior  resident  sent  a  freshman  down- 
town by  bicycle  to  get  tobacco;  but  when  he  re- 
turned it  appeared  that  nobody  had  a  pipe. 

During  my  stay  at  Galesburg,  Billy  Sunday, 
once  a  Chicago  ball  player  under  Pop  Anson, 
and  now  a  revivalist  famous  throughout  the 
Middle  West,  concluded  a  campaign  against  the 
devil,  in  which  eternal  fire  flamed  hotly.  He 
is  a  remarkably  dramatic  exhorter  and  a  man 
of  manifest  sincerity;  and  he  converted  large 
quantities  of  students,  including  several  of  this 
wickedest  fraternity.  Among  the  young  women 
his  harvest  was  vast.  Now  Knox  is  just  finishing 
a  gymnasium,  not  the  least  anticipated  feature 
of  which  is  a  hardwood  floor  flanked  by  alcoves, 
an  ideal  spot  for  the  college  dances  which  hitherto 
have  been  held  in  a  dingy  hall  in  town.  But 
among  the  unregenerate,  anticipation  had  turned 
to  despair.  Billy  Sunday  had  forbidden  dancing, 
so  where  were  the  partners  to  come  from? 

At  both  Knox  and  Beloit  the  young  women 
live  in  a  single  community  in  a  separate  building 
equipped  with  kitchen,  dining-room,  reception 
and  drawing-rooms,  gymnasium,  and  under  a 

262 


VERSUS  THE  UNIVERSITY 

closely-similar  regime.  Emerson  Hall,  Beloit,  is 
fine  architecturally  and  beautifully  equipped,  and 
the  life  in  it,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  exemplary.  The 
food  is  so  good  and  the  dining-room  so  attractive 
that  several  of  the  young  instructors  come  there 
for  their  meals — at  least  that  is  the  only  motive 
they  would  admit  to.  Among  the  students  a  con- 
stant permutation  of  seats  at  table  promotes 
general  sociability.  Every  evening  after  dinner 
there  is  dancing  (non-coeducational)  in  a  large 
and  beautifully-furnished  drawing-room. 

Life  in  Emerson  Hall  is  governed  by  an  asso- 
ciation similar  in  aim  and  in  compensation  to  the 
Dean's  cabinet  of  men.  To  maintain  quiet  in 
study  hours  there  is  a  system  of  proctors,  and  on 
each  floor  one  or  more  officers  known  as  squelch- 
ers. The  ideal  of  the  hall  is  democratic  unity  and 
loyalty.  There  is,  however,  a  tendency  to  form 
exclusive  societies.  It  is  generally  believed  that 
the  Shakespeare  society  is  a  veiled  sorority. 

Owing  to  the  wealth  of  general  apartments  in 
Emerson  Hall,  there  are  rooms  for  only  forty-five 
students.  Others  room  in  adjacent  cottages,  one 
of  which  is  devoted  to  the  junior  class  as  a  body. 
The  total  number  of  young  women  is  strictly 

263 


THE   SMALL  COLLEGE 

limited  to  eighty-five  —  all  that  can  be  adequately 
housed  by  the  college.  Every  year  many  are 
turned  away.  Knox  is  only  a  little  less  strict. 
There  is  a  strong  contrast  here  with  the  neigh- 
boring state  universities.  At  both  Knox  and 
Beloit  the  social  life  of  the  women  leaves  little 
to  be  desired.  I  could  not  find  that  the  limita- 
tion of  number's  was  the  result  of  any  general 
predilection  for  smallness.  Beloit  resisted  coedu- 
cation until  1895,  and  gave  in  then,  I  was  told, 
only  because  it  felt  the  need  of  more  students. 
There  never  was  a  better  example,  however,  of 
the  advantage  of  limiting  the  number  of  under- 
graduates according  to  the  capacity  of  the  col- 
lege to  assimilate  them  socially. 

At  Knox  there  is  no  men's  dormitory,  no  gen- 
eral gathering-place,  and  no  general  commons. 
Except  for  the  fraternities  the  men  live  broadcast 
in  the  houses  of  the  townspeople,  and  the  chap- 
ter houses  are  widely  removed  from  one  another. 
At  Beloit  there  is  a  dormitory,  Chapin  Hall,  with 
kitchen  and  dining-room;  but  life  in  it  is  far 
from  attractive.  Until  lately  the  academy  stu- 
dents mingled  there  with  college  men.  The  food 
is  said  to  be  poor,  and  the  general  life  until  this 

264 


VERSUS  THE  UNIVERSITY 

year  has  been  turbulent  enough.  Now  the  stu- 
dents are  responsible  to  themselves  for  their  own 
well-being,  and  there  is  said  to  be  comparative 
peace  and  quiet.  The  real  reason  for  the  unpop- 
ularity of  Chapin  Hall,  however,  is  that  it  is  the 
abode  of  "barbs,"  the  fraternity  men  flocking  by 
themselves  through  all  four  years. 

The  fraternity  is,  in  fact,  the  crucial  problem 
of  the  small  college  in  general.  That  the  evil 
features  which  I  have  noted  elsewhere  are  pecul- 
iarly developed  at  Beloit  and  Knox  I  shall  not 
venture  to  say ;  but,  in  a  considerable  experience, 
I  have  never  heard  them  as  frankly  admitted  and 
as  calmly  accepted  as  inevitable  —  indeed,  as  a 
virtue.  The  basis  of  election,  it  was  admitted, 
was  not  what  a  man  had  done  or  could  do  for  the 
college,  but  his  desirability  as  a  housemate.  As 
the  rushing  begins  shortly  after  the  opening  of 
college,  the  test  is  largely  a  freshman's  family 
and  social  position  at  home.  One  chapter,  at 
Knox,  rather  boasted  of  the  fact  that  it  was 
able  to  maintain  its  standing  by  electing  sons  of 
former  members  of  the  fraternity. 

The  non-fraternity  men  very  naturally  resent 
all  this.  At  Beloit  I  was  told  that,  during  the 

265 


THE   SMALL   COLLEGE 

general  reception  to  freshmen  and  at  Big  Hill 
Day,  the  fraternity  men  showed  a  disposition  to 
flock  by  themselves,  and  (this  seemed  to  be  the 
crime!)  to  monopolize  the  young  women,  who 
shared  the  weakness  of  their  sex  for  badges  of 
distinction.  The  "barbs  "  threatened  that,  if  this 
sort  of  thing  continued,  they  would  stay  away ; 
and  so  matters  were  altered  for  the  better.  But 
the  spirit  that  caused  the  difference  remains. 

Westerners  often  stigmatize  the  Eastern  uni- 
versities as  snobbish;  but  in  such  a  comparison 
they  do  not  appear  at  marked  disadvantage. 
Gentlemanly  character  and  good  fellowship,  it  is 
true,  count  for  much  at  Yale  and  Princeton,  and 
it  is  well  that  they  do.  But  the  primary  basis  of 
election  is  what  a  man  has  done  for  his  alma 
mater. 

When  I  pointed  out  that  many  men  of  good 
character  who  have  made  their  mark  in  debating 
or  athletics,  even  captains  of  university  teams, 
were  not  fraternity  men,  the  objection  was  met 
with  bland  surprise.  The  fraternity,  I  was  told, 
was  more  important  than  the  college.  A  man  was 
first  a  member  of  Beta  Theta  Pi,  and  then  an 
undergraduate  of  Beloit.  When  I  pointed  out 

266 


VERSUS  THE  UNIVERSITY 

that  such  a  spirit  was  not  only  snobbish  but  anti- 
patriotic,  I  was  met  with  a  helpless  shrug. 

At  Beloit  I  was  able  to  discuss  a  particular 
case — that  of  the  football  man  who  had  broken 
training.  Though  he  had  come  with  a  reputation 
as  a  player,  and  had  turned  out  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  men  on  the  team,  he  had  not  been  taken 
into  any  of  the  three  fraternities.  Resentment  for 
this  had  probably  had  much  to  do  with  his  insub- 
ordination. It  was  admitted  that,  if  he  had  been 
subjected  to  the  influence  of  fraternity  life,  he 
would  probably  have  acted  differently.  Certainly 
he  would  have  done  so  if  he  had  had  hope  for 
the  future,  as  he  would  have  had  under  the 
Eastern  club  system.  But  under  the  system  of 
four-year  fraternities  the  only  influence  that 
could  be  brought  to  bear  was  a  threat  in  chapel 
from  the  Dean  —  a  fact  which  inclines  the  East- 
ern college  man  to  lift  his  shoulders. 

In  the  small  college,  as  in  the  university,  in 
short,  the  fraternities,  pleasant  and  profitable  as 
they  are  to  their  members,  fail  of  the  two  great 
functions  of  the  social  system  as  it  is  cultivated 
in  non-fraternity  universities.  On  the  one  hand, 
they  neither  stimulate  nor  control  the  leading 

267 


THE  SMALL  COLLEGE 

undergraduate  activities,  and  on  the  other  they 
allow  many  of  the  strongest  men  to  leave  college 
without  the  impress  of  its  best  traditions. 

The  Faculty  at  Beloit  is  mindful  of  these  evils. 
It  has  already  required  the  fraternities  to  defer 
rushing  until  the  third  week  after  freshmen 
arrive,  and  it  hopes  to  defer  it  for  the  entire 
freshman  year.  It  would  be  far  better  to  emu- 
late Princeton,  which  limits  its  eating-clubs  to 
the  two  upper  classes,  and  by  an  intelligently- 
planned  and  rigorously-enforced  system  of  elec- 
tion virtually  does  away  with  rushing. 

But  the  fraternities  resist  even  the  delay  of  a 
single  year.  The  sense  of  the  college  seems  to 
be  that  the  practicable  solution  lies  in  multiply- 
ing chapters,  as  Amherst  has  done,  where  over 
ninety  per  cent  of  the  students  are  fraternity 
men.  Already  both  at  Beloit  and  at  Knox  there 
are  eating-clubs,  which,  though  professedly  demo- 
cratic, differ  from  the  fraternities  chiefly  in  lack- 
ing a  charter.  And  other  similar  organizations 
are  germinating.  But  it  is  hard  to  see  how  a  col- 
lege, split  up  from  the  start  into  rival  cliques,  can 
hope  to  attain  the  ideal  of  representative  and 
efficient  democracy. 

268 


VERSUS  THE  UNIVERSITY 

The  fact  is  that  all  American  institutions,  and 
particularly  those  in  which  the  fraternity  system 
prevails,  have  hold  of  the  wrong  end  of  the  social 
stick.  The  first  duty  of  the  college  is  to  the  stu- 
dent body  as  a  whole;  its  energy  and  its  money 
should  be  spent  in  making  the  general  life 
democratic  and  congenial.  Loyal  efforts  in  this 
direction  are  being  made  everywhere,  even  in 
the  universities;  but  the  only  means  I  have  ever 
discovered  of  effective  reform  is  to  gather  all 
underclassmen  into  a  dormitory,  or  a  system  of 
dormitories,  and  to  feed  them  at  well-regulated 
commons.  The  small  college  should  be,  funda- 
mentally, one  large  social  unit. 

The  life  of  the  women,  both  at  Beloit  and  at 
Knox,  is  so  arranged,  and  the  result  is  highly 
satisfactory.  Why  not  the  life  of  the  men?  It  is 
true  that,  within  this  general  body,  however  com- 
pact, there  will  always  tend  to  be  exclusive  or- 
ganizations. But  if  the  basis  of  election  to  them 
is  tested  merit,  the  upperclass  club  has  proved 
itself  as  wholesome  and  as  necessary  as  it  is  inevit- 
able. The  representative  and  dominant  club  is  as 
vitally  necessary  as  the  democratically  inclusive 
college. 

269 


THE  SMALL  COLLEGE 

After  all  has  been  said,  is  it  quite  certain  that 
even  the  general  life  of  the  small  college,  in 
so  far  as  it  differs,  for  instance,  from  life  at 
Princeton  or  Yale,  differs  for  the  better?  In  both 
types  of  institution  the  student  body  is  divided 
sharply  into  the  socially  elect,  whose  existence  is, 
on  the  whole,  well  ordered  and  fortunate,  and 
the  socially  excluded,  who  live  in  scattered  neg- 
lect. According  to  C^sar,  it  is  better  to  be  first 
in  a  village  than  second  in  Rome ;  but  conversely, 
is  it  not  more  profitable  to  be  last  in  the  broad, 
rich  life  of  a  university  than  in  the  narrower  life 
of  a  college? 

The  universities,  as  we  have  seen,  are  already 
turning  their  attention  to  this  matter  of  the  gen- 
eral residential  life.  At  five  out  of  the  six  insti- 
tutions I  have  studied  there  is  a  strong  faction  in 
favor  of  dividing  the  student  body  into  small 
residential  communities.  At  Wisconsin,  the  near- 
est and  most  dangerous  neighbor  of  the  two 
colleges  we  are  considering,  President  Van  Hise 
has  commissioned  architects  to  draw  up  plans. 
Both  Knox  and  Beloit  face  a  future  grave  with 
uncertainty. 

That  they,  and  all  institutions  of  their  kind, 
270 


VERSUS  THE  UNIVERSITY 

have  a  large  and  important  function  in  the  life 
of  the  nation  is  not  for  a  moment  to  be  doubted. 
Their  opportunity  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  are 
acutely  local.  They  have  the  appeal  on  the  public 
mind  of  the  thing  seen  and  known,  and  their 
traditions  are  more  nearly  in  harmony  with  the 
surrounding  community  than  those  of  a  univer- 
sity can  ever  be,  the  ideals  of  which  are  important 
in  proportion  as  they  are  above  the  common  ken. 
Of  the  graduates  of  Beloit  in  the  last  ten  years, 
almost  seventy  per  cent  have  gone  back  to  their 
homes  in  the  country  round  about  as  business 
men  or  teachers. 

In  the  West,  moreover,  the  small  college  is  able, 
if  it  proves  equal  to  its  opportunity,  to  win  a  much 
more  nearly  exclusive  field  than  the  small  college 
in  the  East.  The  state  universities  are  more  and 
more  tending  to  lay  chief  stress  upon  advanced 
or  characteristically  university  instruction  —  a 
fact  by  no  means  incompatible  with  their  awak- 
ening to  the  social  needs  of  their  students.  Being 
unable  to  exact  tuition  fees,  they  are  more  than 
willing  to  give  over  general  and  collegiate  in- 
struction to  the  colleges.  President  James  of  the 
University  of  Illinois  has  lately  written  the  heads 

271 


THE  SMALL  COLLEGE 

of  neighboring  local  colleges,  offering  to  cooperate 
in  diverting  to  them  students  who  desire  a  general 
education.  Granted  an  adequate  teaching  force 
and  a  wholesomely-constituted  social  life,  the 
small  colleges  of  the  West  should,  in  a  very  few 
decades,  achieve  the  exalted  ideal  of  usefulness 
which,  as  yet,  in  spite  of  their  frequent  protesta- 
tions, they  have  not  achieved. 

The  problem  is  almost  wholly  financial.  Be- 
loit  has  been  fortunate  in  the  benefactions  of 
Dr.  D.  K.  Pearsons,  to  whom  it  owes  its  science 
building  and  both  Chapin  and  Emerson  Halls; 
but  it  still  lacks  funds.  Knox  has  been  incred- 
ibly and,  as  it  seems,  shamefully  neglected  by 
the  citizens  of  Galesburg.  Both  institutions 
have  received  offers  of  funds  from  the  General 
Education  Board,  which  rejoices  in  the  recent 
Rockefeller  millions.  But  the  rejoicing  of  the 
board  is  tempered  by  the  Rockefeller  prudence, 
which  demands  that  each  college  shall  itself  raise 
as  much  as  it  is  to  receive.  Both  despair  of 
being  able  to  do  this,  though  both  have  made 
heroic  efforts.  So  the  fate  of  the  two  colleges  is 
as  yet  an  unfinished  sentence. 


IX 

THE  QUESTION   OF  EXPENSE 

rilHE  question  of  expense,  to  many  the  most 
-*-  vital  of  all,  is  too  complicated  to  receive  any 
adequate  treatment  in  a  work  of  the  present 
scope;  and  it  need  not  do  so.  College  and  uni- 
versity catalogues,  which  are  sent  free  on  appli- 
cation, furnish  details  of  the  cost  of  rooms, 
board,  and  tuition,  and  over  against  these  a  list 
of  scholarships  offered  and  the  conditions  of  win- 
ning them,  the  chances  of  obtaining  local  employ- 
ment, etc.  Sometimes  they  give  estimates  of  the 
total  cost  of  a  college  year.  These  are,  naturally, 
never  in  excess  of  the  sums  required. 

As  a  general  proposition  it  may  be  stated  that 
life  in  small  colleges  is  less  expensive  than  in 
large,  in  the  West  than  in  the  East.  In  the  state 
universities  there  are  no  tuition  fees.  These  dif- 
ferences are  offset  in  a  measure  by  the  fact  that 
many  Eastern  institutions,  especially  the  univer- 
sities, offer  a  large  number  of  valuable  scholar- 

278 


THE   QUESTION  OF  EXPENSE 

ships,  and,  owing  to  the  presence  of  the  idle  rich, 
for  student  tutoring.  The  presence  of  a  large 
city  in  the  neighborhood  means  an  increased  field 
for  remunerative  labor ;  and  those  institutions 
which  command  wide  public  interest  offer  the 
best  field  for  men  who  are  able  to  earn  money  as 
newspaper  correspondents. 

At  Harvard,  Yale,  Columbia,  and  other  uni- 
versities of  the  kind,  many  men  live  on  five  hun- 
dred dollars  a  year  and  less,  and  many  earn  the 
larger  part,  even  the  whole,  of  the  money  they 
spend.  Others  spend  five,  even  ten  and  fifteen, 
thousand  dollars  a  year.  A  boy  who  has  a  thou- 
sand dollars  a  year  need  never  feel  pinched  or  at 
any  real  disadvantage  in  college  life.  Twelve  to 
fifteen  hundred  is  the  maximum  which  wise  par- 
ents will  allow  —  unless  indeed  it  be  considered 
wisdom  to  encourage  a  young  fellow  to  seek  the 
comradeship  of  the  sons  of  the  leaders  in  wealth 
and  society. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


lOMAY'GQfG 

• 

IN  STACKS 

APR  2  e  iosn 

REC'D  LiJ 

*W5    I860 

tfR    1  1971  8  6 

BEC'D  LQ     MA/1 

2271-3PM36 

--** 

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(A9562slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

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